woepwoep

The impossibility to share an experience

2012-01-28T00:02:00.002+01:00

After my mother died, december 2003,
i spent at least one night per week with my father.

Week after week,
he would tell me the same story,
over and over again.

I had been practicing my belief system,
and the latest belief i experimented with was:
"i want what i get".

No longer would an opinion about this repetition suffice,
no longer could i get away with my wish to be spared from this same story.
it happened in my reality, so i needed ask my self: "why does this happen in my life?"

and, after some weeks,
i began to understand.

i sat with my father,
and said to him:
"you know, i think i understand.
you want to share an experience!
but, you know what?
until i have had this experience that you speak of,
i will not know what you are talking about.
and when i have had this experience,
i will already know what you tell me."

my father, at that point,
said nothing, he just smiled,
and never again told me that specific story.

Is humanity responsible for the earth?

2011-10-22T17:39:00.004+02:00

while we are alive we should do what we can
but the idea that humanity is responsible for the earth is like saying a child is responsible for their mother.

no one on earth has travelled deeper than 6 km into the earth's center
we can not know her, as we can not know our parents

the way out imho is to accept that we ARE our parents, that we are made up from them, that we carry their thoughts, their genes, their beliefs
in the same sense the way out is imho to accept that we ARE the earth and that we ARE the sun
i think this is what is happening to us today

the human mind is slowly recovering from a long term malnutrition in terms of attention
guilt has no place in this - instead we should consider that we can not be in control while we are sick

initiatives such as WeForest show that we want to become healthy again
so my belief is that it is not the trees themselves who will rescue us, but our attitude towards our parents

humility, gratitude, and playfullness once we're feeling better, are the way forward
:-)

warmest regards Ron
(fellow human being)

Wat is eenzaamheid en kun je er iets aan doen?

2010-09-09T13:25:00.001+02:00

iemand die uit de aandacht stroom stapt, dat wil zeggen hij of zij stopt, om wat voor reden dan ook, met het geven van aandacht aan anderen en het ontvangen van aandacht van anderen.

net als bij inademen en uitademen, of willekeurig welke "beweging" dan ook
(Krishnamurti: beweging is dat wat geen begin heeft, geen einde)
kun je het aandacht ontvangen niet los zien van het aandacht geven, het is een (1) "beweging"

bij eenzaamheid is het dus zaak om zowel het geven als het ontvangen te beschouwen als een geheel, als een "beweging". Dan zie je dus dat de beweging van aandacht in de persoon zelf is gekeerd, van een open systeem is de persoon een gesloten systeem geworden, krijgt geen verse voeding (=aandacht) meer van buiten en sterft dus langzaam af.

hoe kan iemand die eenzaam is, weer een opening vinden en in de aandacht stroom stappen?

zoals uit de bovenstaande omschrijving blijkt, kan het een niet los van het ander. andersom: zodra die persoon hetzij aan de ontvangende kant, hetzij aan de gevende kant, de verbinding met zichzelf loslaat en haar of zijn aandacht richt op de ander, dan is het niet langer mogelijk om eenzaam te zijn - al is het maar voor een seconde.

je aandacht richten tot God (bidden), je aandacht richten op je medemens, zodra iemand aandacht geeft aan "de ander", op dat moment stapt die persoon weer in de aandacht stroom.

nog een heel andere manier is om met je aandacht te gaan naar het geheel van "in zichzelf zijn". bijvoorbeeld als je met je aandacht bij je herinneringen bent, dan ben je "in jezelf". Bert Hellinger noemt dat "ins Heimkino gehen" (naar de thuisbioscoop gaan).
wanneer je met je - bewuste - aandacht gaat naar daar waar je - onbewuste - aandacht op dat moment is, in dit voorbeeld bij je herinneringen, dan gaat die onbewuste aandacht weg. Die onbewuste aandacht zoekt dan een andere weg, net als water in een rivier zoekt ook je onbewuste aandacht het pad van de minste weerstand. En door steeds opnieuw met je bewuste aandacht te zoeken naar waar je onbewuste aandacht is, kom je steeds meer in de aandachtstroom terecht.
Deze laatste manier brengt je op het pad van de Law of Attraction: ineens krijg je allerlei cadeautjes van het universum; je komt weer terug in de synchroniciteit.

Another form of education

2010-04-18T11:46:00.001+02:00

Over relaties

2010-03-30T11:10:00.000+02:00

mijn gedachten zijn als volgt:
- het lijkt erop dat ik heel veel energie verbruik
- het denken in mij vraagt heel veel energie
- die energie moet ergens vandaan komen
- ergens vandaan komen wil zeggen: samen voelen wat er is
- in de wereld daarbuiten komt die energie naar me toe als ik mensen ontmoet, als ik lezingen geef, als ik reacties krijg op mijn verhalen en weblogs
- in de wereld hierbinnen komt die energie naar me toe als ik jouw aanwezigheid kan voelen, als je mij een knipoog geeft wanneer ik weer eens in mijn praatstoel zit, als onze lichamen blij aanvoelen wanneer ze bij elkaar zijn, als je uitspreekt dat je afstand van mij aan het nemen bent en dat je dat niet wil en dan weer terugkeert bij je gevoel en spontaan begint te lachen

verdere gedachten:
- in al mijn relaties tot nu toe lijkt zich een zelfde patroon te onthullen, een cyclus van vier seizoenen, waarna er weer een nieuwe cyclus volgt.

winter: ik heb het helemaal gehad met relaties en accepteer nu eindelijk dat ik alleen ben en niet geschikt voor een relatie
lente: iemand voelt zich aangetrokken door mijn zogenaamde zelfstandigheid / eerlijkheid / authenticiteit. mijn winter smelt want diep daarbinnen heb ik helemaal niks geaccepteerd, als een roker die gestopt is en de geur van sigaretten doet het verlangen weer opleven
zomer: er is niets meer over van de winter, er is een relatie, ik voel me blij, opgenomen, gevoed, ik kan de wereld aan. over en weer zorgen we goed voor elkaar, versterken we elkaar, zijn we samen blij
herfst: ergens is er iets omgeslagen in mij: waar ik vroeger de energie haalde uit mij zelf, is mijn aandacht nu volledig gericht op de relatie. mijn vroegere autonomie is opgelost in de relatie, er lijkt geen andere bron van energie meer te kunnen bestaan. ik heb behoefte aan een voortdurende boodschap van de ander: "je bent belangrijk voor mij".
de ander heeft misschien niet zoveel energie als dat ik verbruik (zie denken 1e alinea), zij voelt de balans omslaan van elkaar versterken naar "ik loop leeg". ze merkt dat mijn doen wordt ook minder, verdwijnt helemaal, alles waar ze vroeger op viel lijkt te verdwijnen en wat overblijft kost alleen maar energie. ergens is er een punt waarop zij het niet langer volhoudt en de relatie wordt verbroken.

en dan is het weer winter.
R

Interview with my mind

2009-08-14T07:58:00.008+02:00

Two days ago i received an email from my friend Steve, who wrote:

"Ron, I have the feeling you may be one of the few who understands this: http://realsteveholmes.com/507/507 -- are you calling in in October?"

Steve's article is called "The end of beautiful dreaming", and it discusses the paradox of a mind that does its work.
So i decided to interview my mind, to celebrate my friendship with Steve.

Ron: dear Mind, i am doing this interview with You to celebrate our friendship with Steve. i hope You don't mind that i use You to formulate my questions?
I: not at all! it's Part of what I do for a living.

Ron: before we start, is there anything on You right now that needs to be expressed first?
I: you know, Ron, I have meant to tell you this earlier, but... (pauzes) ... well, letting Steve's article sink in, triggered a thought. I mean, I am so grateful for living in the penthouse of your body. It has such a nice View !

Ron: You are very welcome ! isn't that a Feeling that You describe? i didn't know minds had Feelings ?
I: yes that is quite often the case. people don't realize that Minds have Feelings too.

Heart: can i say something?
Ron: please go ahead.

(a short silence. an emotion of deep sorrow emerges. tears come out. then again silence)

Ron: thank you !

(Ron is still silent)

I: that was wonderful !
I: why do You say that?
I: it's Part of what I do !

( while Mind is having a conversation with itself, Ron is still impressed with the silence of the Heart )

I: Ron are you there?
Ron: yes, i am back. excuse me for leaving.
I: glad to have you back, Ron !
Ron: is this what happens when i disconnect from You? that you start talking to Your self ?
I: well ... yes ... I mean ...

( Mind seems to be a bit confused now. Ron pays attention only. Time ceases to exist. Heart is smiling. This is Her language. )

I: Ron, I think the interview is over.
I: who gave You that thought?
Ron: ok, ok, I get the message !
I: welcome back, Ron !

( Ron feels the patience, and the faithfulness, the loyalty of his Mind. A deep sense of gratitude comes from within. )

I: we need to talk.
Ron: yes
I: I'll do the talking.
Ron: yes

I: I want to talk about the things Steve writes about in his article. About Step 1, the dominance of the mind. and about Step 2, the regeneration of feeling. And I also want to discuss the issue of what reality is.
Ron: yes, excellent. anything else You want to talk about?
I: No, I think I am fully satisfied now. thank you Ron !
Ron: it was our pleasure !

Wie ben ik?

2009-07-06T09:26:00.003+02:00

Dit artikel wordt geplaatst in MB543 (MB=MensaBerichten)

Wie ben ik?

Vorig jaar nog dacht ik, als antwoord op de vraag “Wie ben ik?” : ik ben mijn aandacht.

Het leek me wel een grappig perspectief om dat zo een jaar vol te houden. Ik ben mijn aandacht. Ik ben, waar mijn aandacht is. Wat brengt zo’n perspectief?

Eerst maar eens mijn ouders. Ik ben – biologisch, genetisch, of voorzien van welk label dan ook – het product van mijn vader en van mijn moeder. Ergo sum … ik ben het product van de aandacht van mijn vader en de aandacht van mijn moeder. Hé dat is grappig. Ik denk dat ik het zelf ben, maar het is de aandacht van mijn vader. Of: ik denk dat ik het zelf ben, maar het is de aandacht van mijn moeder.

De tweede ontdekking was: mezelf zijn. Dat gaat als volgt: ik merk dat ik niet bij mezelf ben. Ik ben mijn aandacht; ik ben waar mijn aandacht is. Ach so. Dus mijn aandacht is elders ! Nu ga ik op zoek naar: waar is mijn aandacht; waar ben ik? Ik merk op waar mijn aandacht is (voortdurend de omgeving afscannen, ken je dat?). Nu doet zich iets merkwaardigs voor. Als ik bemerk waar mijn aandacht is, dan keert ie bij me terug. Hartstikke lollig !
Gecenterd zijn heeft dus iets te maken met terugkerende aandacht. Ik ben bij mezelf, ik ben bij mijn aandacht. Ha ha ! Die is fijn, die steken wij in onze zak.

Derde fase. Ik heb een eigen bedrijf. Het heet “Maak je geen Zorgen”. Dat kan geen toeval zijn. Ik creëer mijn business concept voor 2008: “Mezelf zijn”. Ik weet: als ik mijn best doe, dan lukt het niet. Maar wat dan? Wat moet ik doen om los te laten dat ik nog iets moet doen? Als ik mezelf ben, ben ik dan nu al klaar? Maar eh … En geleidelijk aan kom ik tot mezelf. Mezelf zijn betekent dat ik kan ontspannen. Het diepe gevoel van iets dat klaar is. Vanaf nu ben ik alleen nog maar mezelf. Het werk is dus voortdurend al klaar, elk moment van de dag. In de vormgeving is het, eenmaal het concept er is, gemakkelijk. Ik ben representant bij opstellingen, alleen jezelf zijn wordt gevraagd. Ik ben wilde gans bij een brainstorm tweedaagse in Antwerpen, degene die onnozele vragen stelt, en waardoor de klant haar blinde vlekken ontdekt. Ik verzin “Spreek-uur”: U spreekt, ik luister. En functioneel blijf ik erbij dat ik uw probleem niet begrijp, totdat u een inzicht krijgt. En mij niet meer nodig hebt.

Nu, een jaar later. Wat zal ik nu gaan doen? Een vriend schiet te hulp. Hij vraagt aan mij: “Hoezo is het jouw aandacht? Heb je voorkeur?”. Oeps! Daar lijkt een nieuw business concept, een nieuwe ik. Een ik die niet van mij is. Een ik die voortdurend in uitwisseling is met zijn omgeving. “Ik” laat me raken. Als “ik” er niet meer ben, wie ben ik dan?

Was ik in 2008 nog de bestuurder van mijn aandacht, nu in 2009 en mogelijk in 2010, schuif “ik” door naar de relatie. Aandacht stroomt door mij heen, maar is niet “van mij”. Ik ben het modem, niet de inhoud. Zo, nu eerst maar eens een jaartje niksdoen, en dan op vakantie.

Hartelijke groeten Ronald

The paradox of problems that can not be solved

2009-01-22T09:44:00.002+01:00

This posting blogged first at www.ecademy.com

The situation is that i find it hard to express my self.

I setup my mind to be in a receptive state,
to translate to images and words that,
which my body has to say.

My biological body is a fusion of the bodies of my father and of my mother,
Their bodies, in return, are a fusion of the bodies of their fathers and their mothers.

I contemplate if it is possible that my problems are in fact their problems,
I contemplate if my body is susceptible to the same energies that their bodies were susceptible to.
Were, because my parent bodies are no longer alive.

I have this problem that has been with me for so long.
A deeply felt sense of ... what is it?
Fear? Responsibility? The pain of humanity?
I am not sure.

I wonder if this sense is a reaction from my body.
I wonder if i inherited this from my parents.
Maybe they felt the same.

What if they, in return, got this same sense, from their parents?
What if the problem that i hold for so long, is not mine, is not theirs either?

I realize that it is the same situation for me as it is for my parents.
I feel that i will be set free if my parents give their problem back to their parents,
and their parents in return give it back to theirs,
perhaps all the way back to Adam and Eve,
the original sin.

And now,
contemplating all this, i realize,
i must make the first step.

My parents can not give back their problem, unless i give it back to them first.
I come to realize that i felt this need to solve their problem,
and the fact that i can not solve my problem suggests,
that it is not my problem at all.

So now i imagine that the problem is not mine,
i still don't know who owns the problem,
but i feel the reaction of my body.

I feel joy and relief, so i know i am on the right path.

Now i consider the next question, of giving the problem back to my parents
I have no answer for them as to the question of : is this yours?
I only know that i trust them to do with the problem as i have done,
since i am they and they are me.
If i can do it, they can do it.

In fact, there is no option that they are less capable than me,
for how could i be me unless they were them ?

My mind understands all this,
and i can start the process of grief,
of saying farewell to all the energy that i put into solving someone else's problem.

I feel that it is difficult to let go of the problem.
A huge gap opens up now that i have no longer this problem.
What will i do? How to give a new meaning to my life?

This is what i came to understand as the paradox of problems that can not be solved

Best regards, Ron
--
Come and join me on Ecademy Club "Follow Me - learn how to become the Warren Buffet of the Atttention Economy"
www.ecademy.com

Driving my attention vehicle

2009-01-03T15:11:00.000+01:00

This blog first posted on Ecademy.com

The story keeps coming back to me so i need to express it.

Some time ago i was part of a team.
There was an important demo planned on friday.
The planner forgot to ask me if i was available on fridays.

I had other plans on friday.
On thursday evening at 7pm, the demo was not ready yet.

We were kicked out of the building by the security officer.
"Building is closing today".

I wasn't going to go back on friday to finish the demo.
But i felt bad about leaving the team.

So i headed back home, a 3 hour train ride
Then, the walk from the home town train station back home, 15 minutes more.

Almost there, the thought re-appeared inside me that i had left the team.

I thought of it some more, and then i found it.
This was about me, the expert, solving problems that no other team member could do.
They needed me !

And then i laughed about myself. How would i know? These people might know a lot more than i do.

So then and there, about a minute before my doorstep, i decided that i would change the direction of my attention.
I kicked out this idea of "the great Ron" and replaced it by a feeling of trust, an inner certainty that the team as a whole would be able to find the solution in time.

i felt my skin glowing and i felt a deep sense of pride
as if the work was already done.

one more time the thought crept inside me "can they do it?"
and then i again realized that the "they" was as much ego as the "me" - it was yet another expression of "they need me"
which, by that time, i knew was the same as
"i do hope they need me?"

and again i laughed
joy about me
and my ego had fun too !

so we were laughing together,
me and my mind, my ego,
walking the last steps to the front door,

it couldn't have been more than 30 seconds,
the door knob in my hand,
my phone rings.

it is one of the team members
"I found it ! " he said

This true story happened somewhere in september 2008.
Ron
---
Follow Me : http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=club&c=5591&xref=69061

What to do when inspiration fails in the artist's life?

2007-12-05T11:20:00.000+01:00

This story might help you to overcome writers block.

Recently I was walking with my girlfriend Anita. We were talking about our lives. And she said she feels lack of inspiration to create new artwork.

Having known her for the last three years, I know about some of the changes that she's been through recently. She switched jobs. Her two sons moved out to live on their own. I moved in with her, just to name some of the changes. I would have thought "how much more inspiration does one need?"

We were talking a bit more about what inspiration means. Then i suggested that she uses this lack of inspiration as a source for her work. My thoughts went along these lines: artwork is an expression of a person with the intention of finding out about feelings inside that need to come out before the person can relate to them.

Anita said the feelings inside relate to desire. She imagined when these desires were satisfied, soon after there would be new desires, and a new cycle would begin.

I asked her if the desire to end desire might also be a desire. She nodded, and then i suggested that she could end her desire to end desire by ending her desiring to end desire. I call this "saying yes", and my quote that goes with it is "I want whatever I get".

Of course she knows all this, we've had these conversations many times. Still, every moment is new, and so we co-create a mutual understanding by not knowing if what we say holds truth for us, the two people that are new to each other and to themselves each and every second.

Dear reader, would you accept the suggestion that resistance is the food for change? Seeking ways out, avoiding to paying attention, resisting change. Is this really possible?

Anita's position is paradoxical. She believes her inspiration fails. But when she uses this lack of inspiration as a source for her artwork, then what is inspiration?

Best regards, Ron

Experiencing the three dimensions of persistence

2007-12-02T10:39:00.000+01:00

This article expands on one of my previous articles, Movements in bilocality

The basic word in persistence is : sistence

Three dimensions of sistence are :

The first dimension is the mind. Mind can only see borders. These are experienced as apparently opposites: parts of a whole that the mind can never experience.
The opposites are : "in" and "ex".
So there is in-sistence and ex-sistence.

Note that the etymology of the word existent (without the extra 's') is from Latin exsistent-, exsistens, present participle of exsistere
The second dimension is the body. Body can not see (= create) form, instead it can only feel content. This content is felt as one whole. The body can never experience the parts of this whole.
The whole is : "re".
So there is re-sistence experienced from the body, which is the swing of "in-sistence" and "ex-sistence" as experienced by the mind.

From the mind perspective, re-sistence is the pause at the end of each part of the swing. Breathing in and out (= ex), the buddhists contemplate this pause in this swing as the entrance / exit to another dimension.

To fully understand the relativity of perspective, consider mind and body as bilocality : two apparently opposite perspectives on one and the same area.
To insist is the opposite movement from exsist
Insistence plus existence are together the feeling of resistence
Insistence / resistence / existence / resistence = the four seasons, the full cycle of breathing
The third dimension is that which mind and body co-create. It is a feeling of growth, of "moving forward", an experience of something that "shines through" the outer appearance. Like annual rings on a tree, the tree's recordings of its "ex/re/in/re" cycles
This forward thing is "per"
So we have per-sistence as the third dimension

Now you try, using these three dimensions, with other basic (movement) words like

press: in-press, ex-press, re-press, per-press.
tend: in-tend, ex-tend, re-tend, per-tend.
cite: in-cite, ex-cite, re-cite, per-cite.

You will find that some words are yet non-existing.
Perhaps you find other things, that you would like to share ?

Best regards, Ron
woepwoep@gmail.com

How do miracles happen?

2007-02-17T14:47:00.000+01:00

Hi Jim,

Recently a friend told me a personal story, how he and his wife went upstream to find the source of the Elbe river. He said he'd started out in Hamburg, Germany, where the Elbe is a large river floating through town. Then they went further upstream, into another country, until they were at a small stream. And even there they could go further up the stream to the source of this large river Elbe.

My friend said they ended up at a place where the stream was so small, only one foot wide.

I asked him if he tried stepping into this one-foot wide Elbe. He said no. I then asked if he thought that his step into the source of the Elbe would somehow run this large Elbe river dry, further downstream in this city called Hamburg. Again he said no he thought this would not happen.

I consider this a miracle. When we think of a source, we think of something larger than the outcome / the produce. But reality is different.

I wonder if your question makes sense when we assume that the flow of our thought is naturally towards downstream, with our body sensing towards source which is upstream.

Perhaps miracles are miracles only when we look downstream?

Our body contains the brains, and yet these same brains tell us that we can imagine our body. Which one is larger?

The acheology of the word miracle shows the latin word for "to wonder at".

My suggestion would be to wonder at the direction of thought, and whether this direction is upstream or downstream direction.

Hope this helps.
Best regards, and thanks much for your endorsement,
Your buddy Ron

ATTN: Back to my roots

2007-01-20T09:23:00.000+01:00

(response to a heartfelt message from Martin Dewhurst, founder of Team Penny On)

Yes, going home is going where the food is.
Food we need as a part of the creation cycle.

Food is physical food, food is love, food is order.
That's what we need.
It is the first part of the tide of love and attention.
From our viewpoint, the search for food is the search to alter matter into energy.

Then there is creation.

Creation is altering energy into matter.
It is the apparently opposite part of the tide of love and attention.

From the viewpoint of those who gave us the food, it is quantum leap, the dark side of the moon.
They don't know what the food they gave will do , what effect it will have an onto whom.
It is the daybreak situation ; the wave no longer coming ashore, and not yet returning to source.

Nigel Risner often says : when you are in the room , BE in the room.

I hope this compass helps you Martin to be in the room all the time.
To really see that you are in the room all the time, is to see that there is no room.

PG: How a little girl showed the path to freedom

2007-01-15T08:22:00.000+01:00

This weekend i was offered free attendance to a millonaire mind's weekend.

On saturday, it became clear to me that my next question would be : "how do i let go of my freedom?"

On sunday morning, i waited for the bus, studying clouds, wondering why my attention is always at the other side of the river, when a little girl and her father approached. She was waving hands at me and yelling 'hello!" from her side-wheeled bicyle, as if she was saying to me "help is on its way".

Indeed they sat right behind me, and i paid attention as to how she would show me the way. What happened next was, she got to sit at the window seat, and while the bus was driving, she exclaimed 'Look, daddy, i am looking out the window! " I could sense her joy that the act of looking itself gave her, sense it with all my senses.

So there and then i understood that freedom is gone as soon as i am free. All the way from the bus stop to the venue, i laughed out loud of sheer joy.

Simplicity rulez !!!
Best regards, Ron

ATTN: Wat is aandacht?

2006-09-16T08:09:00.000+02:00

(Dit artikel verscheen eerder in de Mensa Berichten van september 2006)

TITEL: Wat is aandacht?
AUTEUR: Ronald Wopereis (3183)

Nu al weer bijna twee jaar geleden was ik intensief bezig met een project, waaraan ik dacht de rest van mijn leven te zullen besteden: Pay on Demand, een kwantum theorie van de economie. Tijdens een eerder bezoek aan het toenmalige hoofd van de afdeling New Business Development van een van 's-Neerlands grootste banken, kreeg ik te horen dat mijn idee briljant was, maar helaas onuitvoerbaar omdat geen bedrijf ter wereld groot genoeg was om de benodigde infrastructuur te kunnen bekostigen. Bovendien zou dan het bankwezen failliet gaan. Nu was dat voor mijn gesprekspartner niet direct iets om zich ongerust over te maken; zijn afdeling was immers opgericht om te bedenken hoe de bank juist in zulk soort situaties zich nuttig zou kunnen maken en aldus blijven voortbestaan.

Aangezien het onmogelijk was om de infrastructuur te bouwen, en desondanks dit idee op de een of andere manier in mijn hoofd terecht was gekomen, besloot ik dat het dus niet anders kon of de infrastructuur was er al lang. Aldus gewapend met een nieuw perspectief bezag ik de wereld. Ik ging mijzelf en ook andere mensen vragen stellen. Wat lost een oplossing op? Wie ben ik als ik mezelf niet ben? en zo meer van die interessante weetjes, om tenslotte terecht te komen bij vragen als Wat is aandacht? en Wat is een keuze?

Inmiddels heb ik het eerste deel van mijn avonturen op schrift gesteld. Op Internet blijk je namelijk te kunnen "self-publishen", oftewel je kan een boek uitgeven zonder dat het je geld kost. Mijn boek "Bilocality and the inner world of attention" heb ik uitgebracht via www.lulu.com. Voor de schrijvers-in-spé onder jullie wellicht een aanrader. Voor 35 dollar krijg je zelfs een heus ISBN nummer en komt je boek een jaar lang op Amazon in de catalogus, evenals in "Books in Print". Maar dat terzijde.

Eind dit jaar wil ik deel twee van mijn reis te boek gaan stellen. Momenteel verzamel ik links en rechts wat materiaal. Ook op mijn website www.maakjegeenzorgen.nl staat een berg aantekeningen. Kortom een rommeltje, mijn studie is nog niet afgelopen.

Wat is aandacht? Zoals je je wellicht kunt voorstellen, verandert het antwoord met het inzicht. Zoals de zaken er nu voorstaan, zie ik aandacht als de tegenstroom van liefde. Visualiseer met me mee als je wilt, en zie dan de twee polen van het geheel en de delen. Het geheel kan geen delen onderscheiden; en de delen kunnen het geheel niet waarnemen. Arthur Koestler noemt zo'n entiteit een holon, iets wat een geheel is van delen en zelf ook weer deel van een geheel. In mijn eerste boek heb ik de term "bilocality" geintroduceerd. Onze eigen filosoof Spinoza heeft in zijn boekje "Ethics" daar prachtig over geschreven, hij zei zoiets van mind en body zijn twee perspectieven op een en hetzelfde gebied. Dus het geheel is hetzelfde gebied als het gebied van de delen.

Zie dus het geheel als de ene pool, en de delen als de andere pool. Het geheel, dus dat wat geen delen kent. En de delen, die geen geheel kennen. En misschien kun je iets zien van een beweging, energie of iets dergelijks, die van het geheel naar de delen gaat, en van de delen naar het geheel. Het ging om de vraag "wat is aandacht?". Stel je nou eens voor dat je die stroom "liefde" noemt, wanneer je kijkt vanuit het geheel, in de richting van de delen. En stel je dan misschien ook voor, hoe je vanuit de delen weliswaar dan niet het geheel kan zien, maar daar misschien wel een "gevoel" bij zou kunnen hebben. Dat tweede perspectief, dus vanuit de delen kijkend naar het geheel, dat noem ik aandacht.

Ik geef nu enkele voorbeelden waarmee je met dit perspectief een beetje kan spelen. Je best doen dat heeft geen enkele zin. Het is een spel waarbij je speelt met de spelregels in plaats van volgens de spelregels. Zoals Krishnamurti ooit zei : "Zeg niet ja of nee, want dan zit je vast. Onderzoek het!" en ook nog zoiets van "Truth is a pathless land." Ok hier komen de voorbeelden. Veel speelplezier !

Voorbeeld-1: vrouw en man.
De vrouw is het geheel, en de man is de delen van het geheel. De man geeft aandacht aan de vrouw, met een kwaliteit alsof hij haar voor de allereerste keer ziet en ongelooflijk nieuwsgierig is naar haar. De vrouw ontvangt deze energie als "aandacht". Zij opent zich voor deze aandacht, die maakt dat zij zich bewust wordt van iets in haar dat onmetelijk groot is. Het geheel kent namelijk geen delen, en dus ook geen definities, geen woorden, geen randen. Omdat er een beweging is van de delen naar het geheel, is er dus ook een tegenbeweging. Deze tegenbeweging nu, is "liefde". De man ontvangt deze liefde, en ook hij wordt zich bewust van iets in hem dat onmetelijk groot is: datzelfde geheel. En nu pas raakt hij écht geinteresseert. Hij probeert met zijn mind de omvang te peilen van dat wat hij bij haar heeft ontwaard. En dat wat in haar is, op de golven van zijn aandacht, wordt groter en groter. Beiden, zowel man als vrouw, zeggen "wow !". Het is een kettingreactie tot in het oneindige. Of liever gezegd, ik heb geen idee hoe groot die eigenlijk is.

Voorbeeld-2: kind en volwassene.
Het kind is het geheel, en later, als het volwassen is, is het de delen van het geheel. Misschien kunnen we even voor het gemak dit kind "innerlijk kind" noemen. Het innerlijk kind is het geheel, en de volwassene is de delen van het geheel. Nu kun je weer dezelfde namen gebruiken om de beweging van geheel en delen te volgen. Het geheel is altijd ontvangend, reagerend, kan uit zichzelf niet veranderen want het was al een geheel, is een geheel en zal ook altijd een geheel blijven. Dus de actie komt vanuit de delen, die dan op zoek zijn naar het geheel. In dit geval is het dus: de volwassene geeft aandacht aan haar of zijn innerlijk kind, met een kwaliteit die hiervoor is genoemd. Oordelen en waarnemen sluiten elkaar uit, het is van belang om dit even in de gaten te hebben. Dus zodra je oordeelt, sluit je je ogen voor datgene wat aandacht vraagt. Je zegt "ken ik al, dus kijken is niet nodig". Ok, dus de volwassene heeft aandacht, volledige aandacht, voor zijn of haar innelijk kind. Het kind ontvangt deze energie als aandacht, en de tegenbeweging is liefde.

Misschien op de valreep nog een derde voorbeeld. Stel dat de delen het niet kunnen opbrengen om aandacht te geven. Stel dat de delen zelf aandacht nodig hebben? Of dat het geheel niet in staat is zich te openen, en liefde te geven. In de relatie tussen man en vrouw gaan ze dan op elkaar zitten wachten. Let wel, ik heb het hier niet over de fysieke man en vrouw - dus ook in een hetero huwelijk kan de man het geheel zijn en de vrouw de delen, misschien spreken je de termen zender (man) en ontvanger (vrouw) aan, dat blijft toch cultuurgevoelig, let alsjeblieft niet op mijn woorden maar verzin die van jezelf. Wat ik wilde zeggen, in de vastzittende relatie wil de man aandacht in plaats van dat hij die aandacht geeft. En de vrouw die meedoet in zijn spel, zij wil liefde ontvangen in plaats van liefde geven. Liever gezegd, hij moet eerst. En dat is waar. Alleen, hij kan niet. En dat is ook waar. Soms blijkt dan waarom, bijvoorbeeld omdat er nog weer een andere dynamiek gaande is, namelijk de aandacht die door generaties heen vloeit. De man die met zijn moeder is getrouwd, de vrouw die haar moeder maar een slappe hap vindt. Wat kan zo iemand doen? Misschien vind je het leuk om te reageren, in de MB of in persoonlijke email.

Hartelijke groeten,
Ronald Wopereis
aandacht@maakjegeenzorgen.nl
06-29 584 582

ATTN: The art of un-knowing

2006-08-01T18:50:00.000+02:00

The question of what is peace is really about seeking to understand, rather than to agree or disagree. We understand that all conflict arises from two or more claims on one and the same area; be this area the truth, a country, or any other right that excludes the claims from other people.

Art, in its own unique way of expression, is a way out of this dilemma. The dilemma is that our minds must be free, unique, without conflict or arguement; yet our intuition is one. The project about attention is to find out , how these two perspectives of mind and intuition can exist concurrently. Our translation of mind = HOW , the expression, the shaping. And the translation of intuition = WHAT , the content, the formless. Together they form a bilocality. There can not be content without form, no fruit without skin. And yet there can be no form without content; borders exist by the virtue of contrast.

The art of dialogue is then, to understand that HOW and WHAT, mind and intuition, affect one another. I use my attention to feel, and if i want to analyse my feeling with my mind, i use part of this feeling-attention for mind-attention. The result is that i have less attention less to feel. Then my mind tells me that i loose grip of my feelings. I try even harder, which means i take away even more feeling-attention and use it for my mind to work harder. And in this process, where feelings are gone and the mind is left with nothing to shape, to analyze... This is where you and i need to be a team. One is the mind, the other is the intuition. This game, this dance, is a never ending one, you and i can switch roles each and every millisecond. Most people don't realize that the game continues : that it is a quantum process, where the reality is different, depending on whether you observe , be aware , or whether you don't.

To see the process, this game, you and i need to step back. If you look into the world, thru a pair of red-coloured sunglasses, you see the world as red. But if you have had these pair of red-coloured sunglasses all of your life, then the world does not look red ; instead it looks NORMAL. So the question is : how do i know that i am wearing a pair of red-coloured sunglasses ? How do i start to wonder ? And so , within the dialogue , there is yet another level of collaboration, of being a team. This is the art of unknowing, of walking the path back from knowing to not-yet-knowing. You ask yourself : how do i know this for sure ? Where did this belief come from ? What is this feeling all about ? And instead of answering these and other question, thereby effectively shutting down the door to the world beyond the red colours, you start looking for your glasses. Nobody in the world has ever reminded you that you were carrying such a thing as red-coloured sunglasses. They thought it was YOU.

The art of dialogue is the ugly duck looking in the pond, seeing its mirror image. The art of unknowing is the ugly duck, asking itself if being different means being less equal. So where do we go from here? What is normal? What is frustration? And how can art help to build the bridge to a future, where each person is acknowledged for their uniqueness, and radically included in this one whole that is incomplete without the last person at their own unique place.

ATTN: Here's an exercise to experience the third dimension

2006-07-20T16:12:00.000+02:00

Bilocality is two opposite perspectives on one and the same area.

The movements in Bilocality
Movement is that which has no beginning, no end. Jiddhu Krishnamurti.

in zero dimensions, the movement looks like no movement. Oneness. No borders, no contrast, no movement.
adding a first dimension, the movement looks like a swing. Back and forth. Contract and expand.
adding a second dimension, the movement looks like a cycle. Breathing. Seasons. Daybreak is at the end of one swing ; nightbreak at the other end.
adding a third dimension, the movement looks like a spiral. (*)
adding a fourth dimension, the movement looks like this : the spiral contracts and expands. Like going from wide, into a narrow tunnel or mirror, to wide

(*) To understand the third dimension, here's an exercise i picked up from Hans Planje, astrology teacher with Aurinko in the Netherlands. From their website: Aurinko is Finnish language, means "Sun". The symbol for the Essence, symbol for thé source of creativity and self expression. Thé creative power of the human being is to create life by living it. Aurinko wants to participate by teaching you a means that shows you what life is.

Exercise to experience the third dimension
Find two other people, the three of you find a large enough space to experience spiral movement. The experience is that of the moon running circles around the earth, while the earth runs circles around the sun. You represent the moon; the second person represents the earth; the third person represents the sun. Afterwards you can change roles, so everyone gets a chance to see, or rather to feel, the differences in viewpoint.

Beginning position:
The sun stands in the middle of the room.
The earth stands at a distance to the sun, such that in 365 steps she makes a full circle around the sun.
The moon stands in between sun and earth, as close as possible to the earth. With every step the earth makes, the moon completes one full circle around the earth.

Direction of movement:
is reverse-clockwise at all times. So from north to west to south to east to north.

Walking instructions:
The sun does not move because this is experience is limited to three dimensions.
The earth starts walking around the sun, paying attention ONLY to the sun.
The moon starts walking around the earth, paying attention ONLY to the earth.

Goal of the experience:
We want to let the moon experience something, so the earth should keep up the same speed at all times, paying attention ONLY to the sun. The pace is whatever the moon can handle.

Enjoy !

----
I-Name: =Ronald.Wopereis

Author of "Bilocality and the inner world of attention".

Why change ?

ATTN: Pleading guilty

2006-07-14T02:04:00.000+02:00

Think 1,000s of years
Think how the women were oppressed
and how, at the dawn of this millennium,
the women are asking the men to listen to her accusation
of violence
of suppression
of distance,
of resistence to she, who is his source and destiny.

Where are the men ,
who will not run away
when the women need to look him straight into the face
when they tell him of all their sufferings?

This is a story in small, within one family
it is a story of female versus male energy balance
it is the story of Kerry Santo and Modo Fac Central
of Nefertiti and Akhenaton
your story, my story
it's bigger than just you and me,
can't you see ?

The woman needs the man, more than ever,
to acknowledge what he did to her for centuries,
to say "yes we did", to plead guilty to the accusations of the women

The message needs to be heard
only then
it is possible for her to show her love
that which has never left her

There need not be a penalty
Nelson Mandela showed us how.
Just this acknowledge, this seeing of the suffering of the women
and that it should end.

ATTN: How i made friends with my ego

2006-07-09T09:04:00.000+02:00

I experienced a shift in consciousness when i made friends with “my ego”.

Until that moment, i had always experienced my ego as an outside person, stronger than me, who would always prevent me from doing this or that, or persuade me to do such and so.

Then, one night, i was attending a lecture at the esoteric school that i joined. The teacher was speaking about the law of two, the law of apparently opposites. Black and white, thumb and fingers, red and white bloodcells. He instructed us to seek 1,000 examples of this law of two; and if you don't get it by then, he added, seek another 1,000 examples, until you do.

Further instruction included counting. He said our mind loves to count, so when you're on the road, count cars, lamp posts, trees, it really doesn't matter what you count.

So i was on my way to the south of the Netherlands. And i was counting. You know, my mind just LOVED it. I was having a great time. I thought.

And suddenly, there was this shift. Suddenly, i came to realize that my mind was no longer protecting me. While my mind was counting, i was seeking examples of the law of two. And all of a sudden, my mind came back to me from playing. “What are you doing?” it asked. And i had to confess that i was collecting samples of the law of two. My mind realized that it was inevitably going to be affected by this collecting of samples. And i got really sad. In fact i cried my eyes out.

It was then that i realized my mind had been my guard all along. Like Peter and the Wolf, little Peter with his wooden gun, guarding the house while i was away. Brave on the outside, but scared on the inside, longing for me to come home.

That is where i made friends with my ego, with my mind.

Best regards, Ron

ATTN: A new theory of attention - part one

2006-07-07T11:27:00.000+02:00

Love and attention are the high and low tide of our energy system.

Love is the food, flowing from the whole to its parts.
Where there is a movement, there is also a countermovement.
Attention is the the existential emptiness, the flow backwards from the parts to their whole.

And then there is the holon, the whole for its parts and the part within the whole.

When we consider love and attention, whole and parts, there are several orders to be observed.

One is time, where the parent is born before the child. And so the parent is the whole.
The child pays attention to the parent, in order to receive the love from the parent. And the parent decides how and when they will give their love to their child. This is what brings about conditioning.

One is again time, where the person was a child before he became an adult. Let's name the person as a child the "inner child", then the adult pays attention to the inner child. This inner child then radiates love to the adult. Such love is often called passion, or pain, or creativity, depending on context.

In nature, love and attention are seldomly used. For love, the word food usually applies. And for attention, it seems there is no word. The mother bird flies to the nest with a wurm in her mouth. The young birds spread their mouth wide open. Love is the food. What are the wide open mouths? Do young birds pay attention to their mother?

The last example in this part one, is where the whole is the woman and the parts are the man. Use other words if you like. For the woman: female energy, the intuition. For the man: male energy, the mind. So the mind pays attention to the intuition. And the intuition radiates love to the mind.

Why is this all of any importance? Consider the human being a drop of water in the ocean of love and attention. Would a drop of water ever get tired? So why would a human being get tired? Of what?

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Additional comments from this same Ecademy blog :

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(1)
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yes absolutely
i think love and attention are the tides of our own psychic energy system.

in responding to your message, i wanted to use the word "chi" for psychic energy. i looked up the word in wikipedia and could not find it. then searched for energy and landed here :

Conservation of energy states that the total amount of energy (including potential energy) in a closed system remains constant. In other words, energy can be converted from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed. In modern physics, all forms of energy exhibit mass and all mass is a form of energy.

I think love and attention also obey this rule. Paying attention is creating space. Quantum theory represents an object differently depending on whether it is being observed or not being observed. During the act of measurement, the mathematical description abruptly shifts--from a spread-out range of possible attributes (unmeasured object) to single-valued actual attributes (measured object).

The word "mass" reminds me of attention-related words. For instance, the word "important" has the element of the Latin "importare" = to carry in". Important=strongly affecting the course of events or the nature of things - so there again i see how attention "creates" reality.

For the word mass i currently use "fixed attention".

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(2)
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yes i have read the book by Gary Chapman.
What you are referring to , i had in mind to make this part two of a series.

Here's the imaginary situation :
the mother rejects the way in which her husband pays her attention. next, she will find herself inhibited to radiate love to him. And so her desire to have children grows. The child will be a boy. He will then become her husband. This body needs love, and his mother is prepared to give him love, provided that he judges his father and finds him incompetent to love his mother. Next the boy receives love, he takes his father's place and suddenly he feels a deep emptiness inside. This boy has gone away from his place as a child. No longer has he got a father, no longer can he be a child.

For the holon, the chain of events, the karma, it does not matter whether you follow the boy into his marriage, where you can easily predict what kind of a woman he will marry and how similar his marriage will be; or to follow his mother back into her childhood, where she could not be a child and now, as a mother, wants to share her deepest feeling in the only way possible : by having her son experience as a child exactly what she as a child went through.

As for God, here's a quote from Bert Hellinger that resonates with me, about human greatness - which is essentially what the word God means for me:

Some time ago, I was reading texts of Kungtse. When I read these texts, I understood something about human greatness. What I understood from his writings was: What is greatest in human beings is what makes them equal to everybody else. Everything else that deviates higher or lower from what is common to all human beings makes us less. If we know this, we can develop a deep respect for every human being.
-- Bert Hellinger

PG: Reasons to say NO when somebody offers to make you RICH

2006-06-12T19:31:00.000+02:00

Should you need any help with cash flow, consider Dennis Barker. Dennis has been one of the first people on Ecademy who i associated my work with. He and i met on several occasions in London.

Let me share you something that happened to me today. I saw Dennis's ad where he said "if you would like to invest in personal growth, and you are faced with the situation that you have no funds, then this is something i can help you with".
What happened then? I felt anxious to phone Dennis and ask him for help ! That is ridiculous, isn't it? I mean, he and i are on the same path, we are best friends, and i won't let him touch my objections to retrieve the funds that would enable me to personally grow !

When i thought of what was going on, i came to realize that there exists in fact two or more opinions inside me. One is where i really want to further invest in personal growth. The Avatar Wizard course would cost 11k dollars, and that would be a great step forward for me. The other opinion is that i should not run out of objections to personal growth ; what if i had no more external reason that i could attribute my inability to grow to ? And then i wondered if this second opinion might actually have something to do with love. Deep inside me i can feel how i do not wish this second opinion to come out of the shadow and into the sunlight of my consciousness ; how deep down i know and acknowledge the fact that questioning my belief will alter them - and i fear the results. For one i might come to the conclusion that i spent all this energy prohibiting myself all these years, and that i would no longer be able to find any good reason why. And to the other i might now think that i am sacrificing something of me, to the better of the person i love in this act of keeping my low selfesteem; and that this other person, once i tell them about my act, would deny the importance of my act, or even tell me that it meant nothing to them.
I wonder if ever i could live with such a situation. And maybe this is why i refuse help.

ATTN: The two guides of IDEAL ME and REAL ME

2006-04-23T00:12:00.000+02:00

What i am to say next is my personal experience / view. It definitely needs translation for any other person, because of the uniqueness of each individual person and her or his own experiences.

Inside each person there are two guides.

One guide is an outer guide, internalized, and yet it represents the voices from the outer world. Parents tell the child "you must do this or that, you must be such and so". These directions are both conscious and unconscious. The feed, the link, is where the child needs attention (= food) and the parents decide about the ideal child, the state and shape of the child that they approve of before it gets the attention it needs. After internalization - called a script in TA - the "you must" is changed into "i must". And then you think this ideal you, is really you, as if you were the one who owns this voice of "you must". This is the bully guide, the one that overrules the other, more timid, guide. Some people call this guide "my mind" or "my will" as if it were something outside themselves. Well they are right and they are wrong. "Letting go" is not about fight, about being strong. "Letting go" is not about being weak, about surrender. Neither one helps to get rid of the bully guide. What helps is to take ownership of the internalization ; to really stop wanting to escape whatever reality you're in. Picture you being in a prison, and the bully guide says : you may not leave the dungeon, not until your wish to be out has ceased to exist.

The other guide is the inner guide. Let's for now call this the body, or the inner child, the one that is the real you. This is the guide that says "I want" and "I do". This is the guide that IS action. This guide is like a shy child. It is not afraid of the bully guide, but it has no voice like the mind.

Then there is you. You are not your guides, but your guides are part of you. With your attention on either guide, you hear different stories. "I must" or "I want". The guides both talk to you, and you get confused, mixed up, the doubting process begins and procrastination is the result. Attention is psychic energy, and when you have used all of your energy to listen to the guides, there is no more attention left for yourself. You feel trapped. You feel an emptiness inside. You feel bored, want to escape this situation by finding something new ; only to enter another cycle where you feel the loneliness and all these things you wanted to run away from are still there, because you carried them with you all along.

The ideal me is a fake. It is what the environment wants from you. They are your helpers, not your friends.

A friend is someone who enjoys the real you. They want you in no other way than the way you are right now, including all of the potential that you have. They want to find out more about you because the more there is of you the more there is for them to enjoy.

A helper is someone who enjoys the ideal you. They don't pay attention to the real you, they pay attention to the ideal you, their own idea of who you are. And they look in the sky where the ideal you is, and they invite you in by saying "look !" and then they point at the ideal you. And you look away from the real you, and your attention goes to their ideal you, and you start to believe that that is you. And then you're in the expectation, the need to belong, the drama replay of the bully guide who says "you must".

For me, that is a sense of what I set out to achieve in life, where I'd like to see myself and the lessons I'm hoping to undertake along the way, for better or for worse.

My 5 cents: it is a mix of 2/3rd real me and 1/3rd the ideal me. This is the person saying "'i'd like to'" which is a mix of "i want" and "you may not" . This person says "i'm hoping" which is a mix of "i want" and "you may not".

Ask yourself this: what if you were to fully acknowledge the ideal me, who says "you must ask permission"? what if you no longer run away from this "voice" inside your head? what if this parent, this bully guide, what if it were acknowledged : "yes i hear you". What if you inserted 10 seconds between listening and reacting? What if there was a difference between what this guide wants you to do, and what you are going to do? What if you alternate between two states : one in which you would listen only and do nothing ; the other where you only do and never listen?

Isn't confusion about getting mixed up in these two states?

My quest for becoming an honest person is about taking responsibility for both guides. That i am their creator and their host, and that both need my attention in a nurturing way. Both want to help me, and wanting them dead (kill the ego, then you're ok) is not the treatment of an honest person.

Ouch, heavy stuff. I'd better post something funny. Oh well, lets post this first.

EU: what is a servant leader?

2006-04-08T04:08:00.000+02:00

The essence of servant leadership i find in a quote by Arthur Koestler :

The egotism of the social holon feeds on the altruism of its members.

For me, servant leadership is the application of the mechanism described above. The servant leader is at the border of the social holon.

She (he) is not an altruistic member, because she does not "give away" in the sense of a zero sum game. Nor is the servant leader the holon itself, because it is not her (his) egotism that is being fed. The servant leader is the point of least resistance between the holon and its members.

The servant leader pays no attention to the members. She (he) pays 100% attention to the social holon. The servant leader "feels" the total of the members' altruism / energizing life force / that brings the social holon into existence. And she (he) gives direction to this energy.

The holon can not live without its members. But the servant leader is "lifted" by the total energy of the group, and into the position that is like a crossroads ; it is the speed and the volume of the energy that keeps the servant leader going. This in effect is a state of "doing nothing", or "wu wei". For a better understanding please consult Joseph Jaworski's book "Synchronicity : the inner path ofleadership"..

The servant leader never "looks" at the members, because the members "look" at her (him) ; after all, she IS the leader. If she were to look at the members, it would confuse the members because then their attention would reflect back onto themselves, and their altruism ("giving") would necessarily cease to flow.

Unfortunately, there is no substitute for experience.
Nevertheless i hope that my writings have shed some light on my personal beliefs.

Hope this helps,
Best regards, Ron
Senator at Europe United
Author of "Bilocality and the inner world of attention"

EU: the statement on LinkedIN

2006-04-07T03:35:00.000+02:00

I have a dream that communities become the servant leader of communities.

I believe there is a place for each one of us. This place i call home, a place you can not earn, a place no one can show you. When at this place, we experience flow. When we're outside this place, our attention can not flow and we need to get rid of the superfluous attention by solving problems; or if we run low on problems, by creating problems first and then continue solving them.

We need to acknowledge the fact that there is a place for each and every one of us. That being different is natural, because each of our places is at different locations. The state of abundance is the natural state of every human being.

Servant leaders are women and men who are able to receive the superfluous attention; not to keep, but to forward onto the essence of the community, the very reason why these people are together.

It is my place to be one of those servant leaders. That's where i feel at home.

ATTN: what is this feeling of existential loneliness?

2006-03-30T06:13:00.000+02:00

In my theory of attention , that is to say, in the attention language, i consider two primary senses to co-exist. One is the world of physical senses, of feelings, as the awareness of the inner world of attention, with intuition as its source. The other is the world of mental senses, of emotions, as the awareness of the outer world of reality, with mind as its source.

I believe the feeling of loneliness is at the crossroads of these two worlds.

The future of networking

2006-03-22T12:55:00.000+01:00

( this post originally from YouShouldMeet )

The future of networking is evolving into the field of intuition. Movies like What The Bleep Do We Know, books like The Field by Lynn McTaggert, and websites like www.manyworlds.com with the Epiture technology, they all lead us into the same future.

The future that i see is a future of synchronicity, the a-causale connection between people. And the people who are not dealmakers but people connectors, those people understand that their ego is in fact in the way of making any successfull introduction.

The future of business is going to change dramatically. And everything remains the same. What changes is the form, what remains is that teamwork creates a living organism.

Business is about the process of duplication, about getting the individual ego out of the way, and into the collectiveness. Arthur Koestler once wrote, "The altruism of the individual is the egoism of the group."

It may take some years to see this happen on a large scale. Some say the year is 2012, and fewer even include this year in their business development plan.

I look very much forward to what the future brings. And the future is what you make it.
Best regards, Ron

ATTN: What is synchronicity?

2006-03-16T00:52:00.000+01:00

Proposition 33. Things could have been produced by God in no other manner and in no other order than that in which they have been produced.

Demonstration. All things have necessarily followed from the given nature of God (Proposition 16), and from the necessity of His nature have been determined to existence and action in a certain manner (Proposition 29). If, therefore, things could have been of another nature, or could have been determined in another manner to action, so that the order of nature would have been different, the nature of God might then be different to that which it now is, and hence (Proposition 11) that different nature would necessarily exist, and there might consequently be two or more Gods, which (Proposition 14, Corollary I) is absurd. Therefore, things could be produced by God in no other manner and in no other order than that in which they have been produced. Q.E.D.

[source : Spinoza. Ethics. 2001. Hertfordshire:Wordsworth Editions Ltd.

I will spare you the Scholium 1 and 2.

To the question of what is synchronicity, i propose that (a) believing with all of my being, heart / soul / mind / all the rest, that the above statement is true, and therefore never to doubt reality, never to doubt the other person, and thus never to doubt myself ; and that (b) paying attention with all of my being, heart / soul / mind / all the rest, to HOW this is true, so in which manner and which order things are produced ; that this is synchronicity (by definition and in practise).

Thoughts?

Do i have a big EGO ? Please enlighten me...

2006-01-22T17:29:00.000+01:00

I just finished a three days MLM (multi level marketing) college.

One of the things i learned was that in MLM the system comes first and the ego comes second.
What you really want to achieve is to duplicate yourself in other people.

I have a big problem with this. My journey on the question of "What is Attention?" was triggered by a desire that i have to be free, to be able to make my own choices. And when i realized that i need attention from other people, that my need of attention from other people was so big that i would , time and again , react instead of respond... that's when i wondered about attention and who is this i that needs attention.

With the MLM college came the realisation that , in order to be successfull, i need to duplicate myself and i need to get out of the way when my duplicates start to be active. In short, my ego needs to make room for the system.

I try to understand the lesson that the system is simple and the ego makes it complex.
I try to understand that the i is in fact the ego. It is the ego that needs attention.

So when i ask the question of "what is attention?" it is in fact the ego asking this question, and once again it is the ego begging for attention.

What should i do?

I do not recognise you as someone with a big ego but you seem to be saying that you are someone seeking attention. I do not believe it is the same thing.

Now you got me thinking !

Head in the clouds, feet on the earth. I feel stretched. What should i do?

For the last two years i researched head in the clouds. Basically what it taught me is that mind is death and intuition is life. The fear of death is the fear of not being able to return to death once i start to live.

When i was three, my grandfather died. My grandfather represents death ; i want to be with him. In family constellations, my grandfather would say : "go on, live for a while, and then you can join me here." The fear of saying goodbye to my grandfather is what fear of death means to me.

Since age 16 or so, i got heavily interested in the ancient world of the Japanese samurai. Samurai choose death each and every time, because they feel they can not live unless they choose death. When they fight with their swords, the most certain way to lose their life is by protecting (= paying attention to) their own life. Samurai can not win the fight unless they have gone through the process of visualising themselves dying in the fight, and no longer care (=pay attention) about it any more. When the opponent steps forward with their sword, they will not retreat but step forward without any thought of being stabbed.

As i am typing these words, just following my fingers and reading back what just came out, i see that these two paragraphs have really the same message. To live means to no longer pay attention to death ; it means to have faith , to trust , that whatever i do i can not be separated from my ancestors.

I hope this makes sense to me. And grandpa, where ever you are... I wish you were here with me. I wish i were with you. When i pay all of my attention to my intuition, it is then that i feel his presence. And have no more wishes.
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I-Name: =Ronald.Wopereis
Profiles on: Academici Ecademy LinkedIN OpenBC Ryze Soflow Spoke ZeroDegrees.
ClubLeader@ (A)ttention as a Product (B)elief Management (C)reativity Network (E)cademy Twente (R)on's own network - free attention training

Live it all...

ATTN: How to order with the universe?

2005-12-06T06:27:00.000+01:00

Today i experienced yet another example of how attention works.

My girlfriend is looking for a new house. She visited some, and was charmed by one particular house. But there were some minors that made her reconsider. The bathroom on the first floor (2nd floor in US language) did not have a toilet. The kitchen was previous generation. And so on.

Earlier this week, suddenly, she came across this other house. New bathroom, with toilet. Marvellous kitchen. It had everything. Yet, the seller said there were already people making a bid. So there was no deal at this moment.

This morning she called the owner of the first house. Said she preferred the other house; but that she had to wait. And that he, the owner of the first house, need not call her until she would reopen her interest in this first house.

Later this day she and i were walking. And she told me about her phone call. She said : i have kept the communication open, with the owner of the first house. I said why? Why would you settle for less? And when she wanted to answer me, i said : please stay with the question - why would you settle for less? Then she said : you know what, Ron? You're right.

The minute she said it, her phone rang. Couldn't have been more than 2 or 3 seconds. Guess who? The owner of the house she loved, rang her up and said the other people were no longer in the race and she could make her bid.

I have seen this happen time and again. Decision, in latin, means : choose one option and then cut yourself off from any other option. The art of deciding is not simple : it means you need to have access to your own free will, to your own feelings. It means you need to know what it is that you truly want. But then, right when you know what you want, when you cease to manipulate and have it your way, when you just focus on what you want and leave it up to the universe to decide how to deliver it to you, right at that time the universe will come to aid and surprise you.

Does this story sound familiar? Am i the only one to believe that the meaning of life is to find out what it is that you truly want?

Please respond in any way you want.
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I-Name: =Ronald.Wopereis
Profiles on: Academici Ecademy LinkedIN OpenBC Ryze Soflow Spoke ZeroDegrees.
ClubLeader@ (A)ttention as a Product (B)elief Management (C)reativity Network (E)cademy Twente (R)on's own network - free attention training

"I know that this defies the law of gravity, but...you see, I never studied law."
- Bugs Bunny

ATTN: My rendez-vous with a clairvoyant...

2005-11-29T07:18:00.000+01:00

This week i met a lady, she runs a business in change management. She says she has been clairvoyant as a kid, but it was beaten out of her by her mother. Only recently she has managed to change this situation, and she starts to experience clairvoyance again. In her own words "suddenly i started to wonder how it must have been for my mother to beat up her own child". I guess that is what forgiveness really is : to let go of a better past - and this has nothing to do with the other person.

In a dream she saw a friend and his two young kids in an accident. He was drowning in deep water and his kids dived in to save him. She asked me the question : "should i tell him about my dream?" From other experiences she had learned that these dreams of hers become reality.

I asked her if she felt responsible for him. I asked this because in my view this same issue reflects her relationship with her mother - how can a child judge about what her mother does to her and not be affected at the same time? We talked some more, and then i asked what, in her view, could be the reason that this friend would need the experience of being rescued by his children. Suddenly she remembered how this friend - he was her karate teacher - used to be a shy kid, with a similar history of being beaten up by his father as she had experienced with her mother.

When we got to this point, she could see how he and she had crossed paths - both to learn from each other. And then she realized that she could offer him something , something that would make the reality of her dream no longer necessary.
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I-Name: =Ronald.Wopereis
Profiles on: Academici Ecademy LinkedIN OpenBC Ryze Soflow Spoke ZeroDegrees.
ClubLeader@ (A)ttention as a Product (B)elief Management (C)reativity Network (E)cademy Twente (R)on's own network - free attention training

"I know that this defies the law of gravity, but...you see, I never studied law."
- Bugs Bunny

ATTN: What do we want to experience in life?

2005-09-04T06:03:00.000+02:00

I once had this wonderful experience. We were in this group, doing a thoughtstorm. And the question was : "what do we want to experience in life?". We went through all the stages, first to get undressed intellectually by showing off "he he look at me how clever i am, look how funny my answers are, how i can beat any question"; then do sink into this loneliness of "i don't know, nothing's right and i really want to quit this stupid thoughtstorm RIGHT NOW"; until we got into this third stage, beyond the waterfall, where one of us said "Yes!" and we all thought she would come up with the answer that we were all waiting for; and she would only repeat "YES!|" until we understood the elegance and simplicity of this answer. Yes, all we want to experience in life is "yes!".

ATTN: Three attention exercises

2005-07-24T00:12:00.000+02:00

EXERCISE#1 : accessing your intuition
Start by sitting on a chair, with both feet on the ground. Your hands are palm up lying on your thighs. Then you pay attention to your body, with no intention of finding. If you try, if you do your best, then you won´t succeed. Your mind will may come along, wanting to know what´s going on. If it does, then picture yourself putting your arm around your mind and inviting it to sit next to you, while paying attention to your body. Think of your body as a shy child, it won´t come out if you demand it. You need to be gentle and soft. Then you may notice anywhere in your body or even just outside, in the aura, that there is an area that wants your attention. When you notice this, pay attention to the borders of this area. You will know the borders because inside the area is asked for attention and outside the area there is no asking for attention. Just pay attention to the borders of this area, with no other wish than to give it the attention that it asks for.

EXERCISE#2 : accessing your passion
To access your passion, first you need to have a question. A question is the opening tunnel to your passion. By asking the question you can feel the energy coming out of this question. Your mind will want to give answers. When it does, you simply say thank you to your mind, have a look at the answer, then put it aside and go back to the question. You will notice if the question still holds energy. Ask yourself a better question. Use the answers to find a better question. A better question is a question with more energy in it.
When you have found a question, do EXERCISE#1, but this time, find the area inside your body where your question is. Then pay attention to the borders of this area. You will notice the borders of the area because inside the area there is this question, and outside the area there is not this question. Just pay attention to the borders and ask the area things like "who are you" or "what can i do for you". Remember, trying hard is the best way to fail. If your mind comes along, consider it to be your best friend, or maybe you can view your mind to be your child; you put your arms around your mind and invite it to sit next to you while the two of you pay attention to the area with the question.
Sometimes you can feel how this area expands, and you just go along with it. Even if it expands to the universe and beyond, you just go with it and pay attention to its borders.

EXERCISE#3 : accessing the inner world of attention
When you do EXERCISE#2, you can sometimes feel a centre in your passion. Then, while paying attention to the borders of the area, you fall through this center. Your mind does not know how to do it, so you really need to take responsibility by inviting your mind to sit next to you. Remember you are not your mind, but your mind is part of you, as is your body. When you fall through this centre, you may find yourself in another area. Just repeat this EXERCISE#3 by locating the physical exponent of this area, and pay attention to its borders. You can view this "falling through" as a stack of areas. The bottom of this stack, just before you enter the inner world of attention, is the transitional area of life and death. To some people it is most frightening, while others just notice "hey i know this area, i've been there before". No need to worry in either case, it is the passage to your inner self, where you will find the one that you have always been but maybe have not seen for a long, long time.

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I-Name: =Ronald.Wopereis
Profiles on: Ecademy LinkedIN OpenBC Ryze Soflow Spoke ZeroDegrees.
ClubLeader@ (A)ttention as a Product (B)elief Management (C)reativity Network (E)cademy Twente (R)on's own network - free attention training

Freedom is about stopping the past
- Lawrence Lessig

ATTN: Is dialogue about logos (words)?

2005-05-25T20:07:00.000+02:00

I recently learned something exciting about words. It was something that i picked up from L.S. Vygotsky's book - see Club Home Page 3. I came to understand that words are signs. Suddenly i began to realize what Krishnamurti said "the word is not the same as the object that it points to". Let me take you with me on my tour of understanding.

Vygotsky mentions a very young child, stretching his fingers to grasp an object. But the object is too far away from the child. Then, the mother comes to the child's aid, and gives it to him. So there are in fact two movements; one is from the child, the other one is from the child's environment. Note that it is not the object responding, it is the environment, in this case the mother.

So when these two movements are internalized and become one, the stretching becomes pointing and the movement from the environment becomes an expectation, a demand or request to the child's environment to finish the action.

I realized that words are effectively the same mechanism of internalization. The very young child senses an object and the mother says the name of the object.

So when these two movements are internalized and become one, the sensing becomes labeling and the movement from the environment becomes an expectation, a demand or request to the child's environment to finish the action.

Can you feel the implications? To me it means that whatever word i use, the word itself is not me, is my call upon environment to understand what i mean. My part of the internalized movement is the sensing of the object.

So dialogue is not about words in the sense of "a word is an internalized single movement of what used to be my own sensing plus the environment's labeling". Dialogue is about my own sensing in a "conversation" with your own sensing; basically it goes without words while speaking.

In terms of attention: paying attention to the sensing within the internalized word with my intuition while paying attention to the label within the internalized word with my mind - these two can and must go together - dilutes the glue that holds them together.
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I-Name: =Ronald.Wopereis
Profiles on: Ecademy LinkedIN OpenBC Ryze Soflow Spoke ZeroDegrees.
ClubLeader@ (A)ttention as a Product (B)elief Management (C)reativity Network (E)cademy Twente (R)on's own network - free attention training

Freedom is about stopping the past
- Lawrence Lessig

ATTN: Attention and Black holes

2005-05-22T20:45:00.000+02:00

CERN is creating LHR, a vehicle for physicists who wish to create black holes.

Black holes are said to be takers, but they are also givers.

I look very much forward to this development. Latest issue#29 from WIE Magazine has a special called "Is God All in the Head?". In this special an interview with Andrew Newberg, who also appeared in the film What The Bleep Do We Know?.

Newberg did neurological measurements on people who meditate. He found a location in the head brain called "posterior parietal lobe" that is much less pronounced during the meditation session than before. It is this area that gives us a sense of boundary between ourselves and the rest of the world.

The reason i find this so exiting is that this finding supports my current understanding of attention. Neuroscientifical researchers mainly focus on the head brain. They have no interest in finding out where this energy that fuels the brain comes from, let alone how to steer it - which is what attention management is about.
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I-Name: =Ronald.Wopereis
Profiles on: Ecademy LinkedIN OpenBC Ryze Soflow Spoke ZeroDegrees.
ClubLeader@ (A)ttention as a Product (B)elief Management (C)reativity Network (E)cademy Twente (R)on's own network - free attention training

Freedom is about stopping the past
- Lawrence Lessig

ATTN: Why as a product?

2005-05-20T21:48:00.000+02:00

The club Attention as a Product has two questions:
(1) What is attention?
(2) How to make attention into a product?

When i started the club Xmas 2004 - only six months ago - i had no idea where this journey would bring us. All i had in mind was to create attention as a product. What i envision is attention accessible for all people at close to zero cost, like clean water and electricity in some parts of the world. For this to happen, attention could become a utility function, provided by the government. So it has to be on the political agenda; and for that to happen it must be on the scientifical agenda; and for that to happen we need to find out what attention is and how to operationalize it, how to make attention measureable. This journey, as presented backwards in time, is what i had in mind when i started the club.

Meanwhile, i have come to the conclusion that we, the members, are in fact one of the products. By this i mean that when we ask the question, in this club and in other clubs like Intellectualize, Belief Management etc, we start to shift paradigm, from 'Business is Business is a zero sum game' towards the Ecademy values like 'winning by sharing' which is a non-zero game.

These days i consider attention as a product to be like pepper. You don't eat a kilo of pepper, what you are looking for are people who create a recipe with pepper as an ingredient. This may or may not be a deviation from the original path. For me as one of the members, i have come up with the idea of an Attention Institute, where this changed perspective may be taught to the aforementioned recipe creators.

As an example: i invited Marcus Cauchi to tell us about his recipe which is the Sandler Sales Training. Marcus has contributed tremendously in my view by accepting my invitation and actively helping us to understand what attention is.

So now i think i begin to understand Sandler. Sandler is about the duality of seller and buyer, is about maximizing the attention on the seller part and minimizing the attention on the buyer part. And now i can return the offer. To create a market for Sandler Sales Training, I could create the opposite, which i could call the Pandit Purchase Training.

When you as a buyer meet someone who is trained in Sandler, you are effectively without any defense. So you need to attend the purchase training. Then, if you meet a salesrep trained in Sandler, you know what to do. Whereas, if you meet a salesrep who has not been trained in Sandler, then the other guy is effectively without any defense.

This scenario is just one out of five in Game Theory. It is the zero-sum play, where only one can win. By creating this opposite training, you have now two trainings instead of one. Sales on both trainings increase because of the zero-sum included in this concept.

Now for the implementation of Game Theory as a non-zero game.
If both players are competitive, you can only implement zero-sum solutions like the one above. Nothing wrong with that, it is the current business paradigm.
If one player is competitive and the other is cooperative, then the latter looses the game because the competitor does not understand cooperation, it is simply outside the paradigm of winning or losing. The most effective strategy for a cooperative person to deal with a competitor is the tit-for-tat strategy : imitate whatever the other person is doing.
If both players are cooperating, then it becomes possible to create a non-zero game like 'winning by sharing'. Then, instead of two opposite trainings, you can create a third training, in which the rules of play for the unity of seller and buyer are taught. This is where you enter the new paradigm, this is where the Green Bank give loans to women in mid African villages to buy one cellphone and make money.

I hope i'm not losing you here. To me the end of my road is perfectly clear. Our dialogue is about the intermediate steps which are unclear to me. And the dialogue is about your personal life goals, which may be a totally different road, and yet there may be elements inside that cooperate with elements of other member's roads.

It is the winning by sharing concept, and i try to implement it and get it to become alive.

Hope this helps,
best regards, Ron
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I-Name: =Ronald.Wopereis
Profiles on: Ecademy LinkedIN OpenBC Ryze Soflow Spoke ZeroDegrees.
ClubLeader@ (A)ttention as a Product (B)elief Management (C)reativity Network (E)cademy Twente (R)on's own network - free attention training

Freedom is about stopping the past
- Lawrence Lessig

ATTN: An introduction to Family Constellations

2005-04-24T03:13:00.000+02:00

In the summer of 2002 i was introduced to the work of Bert Hellinger. It is hard to describe the impact it had on my personal growth. On my first attendance of a family constellation, within 10 minutes i ran outside to get some fresh air. The subject was sexual child abuse, like in the story written below. And i was just being part of the audience!

After three years of attending these meetings, and having done some other stuff as well, it finally starts to make sense what is happening in these meetings. It is the confrontation, supervised by a facilitator, of the one thing that the person asking the question has longed for the most.

In the family constellation, i have the role of representant. In the example below, i could have been the representant of her father. I have been representant in various roles; a father, a brother, the illness of cancer, and a country of origin. The instant feeling of connectedness right from the beginning of these sessions, has led me to my quest of ´what is attention?´.

Feel free to contact me if you want to learn more about it. The book below is a good introduction. If you can understand Dutch , the word is ´familie opstellingen´ means ´family constellations´.

Ron

If it would have helped, I would have carried my pain
In a training group for therapists a woman stood in the constellation of her family of origin and for the first time she was faced visually with what she knew, but had not recognised: the degree of loss, need and damage in her family system. Within three generations not a single relationship free of damage was found. The relationship of her parents was one of hate and contempt, and from the age of eight years, she was selected to fulfil her fathers emotional and sexual needs, until she could leave home at age eighteen. The sexual operations were cruelly and painful, and took place with knowledge and tacitly approval of her mother.
In preceding therapy she had examined her anger, her pain and her feelings of having been betrayed, and though she had felt relieved, she could find no permanent solution. While she stood face to face with the representant of her father, the therapeut suggested: 'Say to him: "it hurts!"' When she did that, a cry of sorrow arose from very deep inside her. She added spontaneously: 'And it did not help at all; I could not take away your loneliness.' She put her arms around the man who represented her father, who cried also openly, and they held each other affectionately for a long time. For the first time as an adult, she was consciously feeling the love that she had felt for her father as a child and her surreptitious willingness to sacrifice herself for her parents.
After a while she said to him: 'I promise you that no more children will be hurt the way it happened to me. I will pay the price. With me this shall come to an end.' When she turned towards the group and told them that she was lesbian, she did this with a great simplicity and with the full human dignity that was appropriate for her situation.
One year later she still felt the delivering impact of her acceptance of the role which destiny had allocated her and accepted as an aware choice what she had formerly been carrying around unconsciously and could not endure.

Bert Hellinger - Love's Hidden Symmetry (1998)
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I-Name: =Ronald.Wopereis
Profiles on: Ecademy LinkedIN OpenBC Ryze Soflow Spoke ZeroDegrees.
ClubLeader@ (A)ttention as a Product (B)elief Management (C)reativity Network (E)cademy Twente (R)on's own network - free attention training

Freedom is about stopping the past
- Lawrence Lessig

PoD: How to sell the free space inside your refrigerator?

2005-03-28T03:09:00.000+02:00

These days the Internet has a new technology. It is called peer to peer (p2p) technology. I dont know how it works, but it offers some new opportunities. p2p lets me expose my assets in a shop window and publish it on the Internet. Other people can peek through the window and see my published assets.

As an example : i copied my music collection to my computer. Then i downloaded LimeWire and shared all of my music with the rest of the world. I need not even be at home when people come and download my music.

This example is possible today. What is next to come?

I imagine visiting a friend in lets say Amsterdam this afternoon at 15.00 hours. Then i go tell the world about my plan in my shop window. Next, someone else using the p2p software, would find my trip and make use of it. "Ron would you mind taking this package with me?"

I dont want to go to the supermarket so i get my p2p software and find somebody who is actually there right now. I would know this because they published their visit to the supermarket as a service. Then i could message him or her using the same p2p software and ask that they could bring milk and beer to my place on their way home.

I imagine making part of my house into a service area. My refrigerator is half empty and i dont use my washing machine this afternoon. Much like the money outlet is not in the bank and yet not out the bank, my service area is not in my house and yet it is not outside my house. I publish free time slots on my washing machine, and free space in my refrigerator.

What else would be possible using p2p? What would you like the p2p software to do for you?
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I-Name: =Ronald.Wopereis
Ecademy Profile see HERE.
ClubLeader@ (A)ttention as a Product-(B)elief Management-(C)reativity Network
Freedom is about stopping the past
- Lawrence Lessig

ATTN: What's driving the information inside our minds?

2005-03-26T20:25:00.000+01:00

Just this morning i read about the pharmaceutical industry - they sell new diseases for their current products. The way they do it is by first having the new diseases added to the official DSM IV category system and then sponsoring research, doctors and especially the media to suggest a broader definition of the new disease - or should i say : they make it vague. An example is the use of Prozac as a medication for social anxiety

What happens next is that the aware customer says : i suffer from social anxiety. Then (s)he goes to the doctor and claims the Prozac medication.

Taking this example, the question indeed arises as to what is driving the information inside our minds? Consider the patients view: "a quick fix" versus "long years of therapy". Consider the health insurance view: achievement / performance versus quality. Consider the governments view: the framework versus the individual. Consider the producers view: we sell new diseases for our current products.

What happens inside our minds?
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I-Name: =Ronald.Wopereis
Ecademy Profile see HERE.
ClubLeader@ (A)ttention as a Product-(B)elief Management-(C)reativity Network
Freedom is about stopping the past
- Lawrence Lessig

ATTN: Rejecting my parents

2005-03-23T00:16:00.000+01:00

i could only be who i am because of this fact that my father and mother are who they are. There is no separation possible, for i am half my father and half my mother.

The beginning of life is sexual intercourse between a father and a mother. According to Hellinger, a child is absolutely helpless to this basic fact. When a child has judgement over one of its parents, it denies its rightful place in the family order and in fact leaves this place. The penalty for doing so is a deep felt restlessness - thinking of The Wandering Jew here. It can be felt as a black hole inside the body, constantly begging for attention. Sometimes illness is used for a blanket, to cover up this black hole.

A few years ago, this woman who had cancer asked for a family constellation. She wanted to find out what the message was that the cancer might carry for her. There were three representants: the woman, her mother and the cancer. I represented the cancer.

We all stood apart. I felt deep affection for the woman, and this feeling was mutual. When she made an approaching step towards me (the cancer) , i stepped closer to the mother. The woman stopped, feeling confused. I made another step towards the mother, and the woman retreated.

The facilitator stood by the woman, and suggested her to say: "mother, i would rather have the cancer than i would have you". This was most painfull for the woman to say. She cried her heart out, yet she felt these were the right words for her to say.

If i learned one thing in family constellations, it is that staying alive is not the most important of values.
----
Ron
ClubLeader@ (A)ttention as a Product-(B)elief Management-(C)reativity Network
Freedom is about stopping the past
- Lawrence Lessig

ATTN: Can we as global community grow more by paying attention to postive energy?

2005-03-13T02:31:00.000+01:00

By paying attention to the so-called "negative energy" - which is fighting it, rejecting the message inside - i make the negative energy stronger. The other action, neglecting what is negative and paying attention to what is called "positive" - is essentially the same. Both create instability and thus a vacuum on the other side. The way to get out is to do away with morality, and support with energy whatever side needs it, until there is an equilibrium. I think what the TM group did was not to fight the crime, but show compassion and acknowledge the existance of violent crime as a fact, as a sign that there is something in society that calls for attention, something that has a message for those who enforce the "positive". It is this attitude, this acknowledgement that good and bad are both needed, that is bringing about the change. The bad wants to deliver the message, the TM energy is to encourage them to say "yes we understand you need to express yourself, feel free to choose your own way of doing it". And by offering a choice to those criminals, they are finally getting the sought-for attention, and the crime is no longer necessary.

The child that is not getting attention will demand it, either positive or negative. For grown up people it is nothing other than this, only then we call it crime and judge about it. When the king asked Confucius "how can i stop crime in my country", Confucius said: "stop being greedy yourself, then the people will not be criminal even if you reward them for it".

My 5 cts.
----
Ron
ClubLeader@ (A)ttention as a Product-(B)elief Management-(C)reativity Network
Freedom is about stopping the past
- Lawrence Lessig

ATTN: book Winning by Sharing - Leon Benjamin

2005-02-28T04:46:00.000+01:00

In his forthcoming book 'Winning by sharing', Leon mentions Decisionality.

What the paragraph tells me is that the granularity of our product 'Attention' could be as small as a quark. While the current paradigm is one person selling his or her attention for 8 hours a day, we might in fact consider selling particles of attention of 50,000 ecademy members, or maybe 1 billion people worldwide on the internet, in a totally new way.

I wonder what the implications are. There have been some experiments back in 1993 with the Washington DC police and 4,000 TM people concurrently praying for violence crime rates to decrease. The hypothesis was that HRA crime rates would drop with as much as 25% during that particular summer. And guess what? They did.

Just to give you the idea of what is possible. Well, hoping to shake you into the next gear.
Looking fwd to experience your valuable resonance.
----
Ron
Attention as a Product:Belief Management:Creativity Network:D...
One can not change and remain the same person.

ATTN: am i right?

2005-02-24T02:21:00.000+01:00

Recently i read a book by Brandon Bays called The Journey. I forgot just about anything in the book when i read this one sentence near the end. It struck me like nothing before. It said: Never doubt the other person.

As far as i understand it now, it translates somewhere along the lines like this: as long as i feel any doubt, no matter how small, that i would have acted or thought any other way than the other person has done, then it is me who does not understand the other person completely. In other words, when i really understand the other person, there is no more difference in action or in thought between me and the other person.

This is the road from not-knowing to knowing. Krishnamurti uses unknowing, which is the road from knowing to not-knowing. The latter is what we use here on this forum and it is called dialogue. Essentially these are the same, but sometimes the one is on the surface and the other is down below, sometimes it is the other way round. This is also law of two, the law of apparently opposites.

While i type this i try to figure out if this makes any sense. Please don't say yes or no, find out yourself. Let us share our views.
----
Ron
Let the dialogue commence...
One can not change and remain the same person.

PG: Fox Hunting: are we being two faced?

2005-02-20T18:56:00.000+01:00

My father was a hunter. He used to say: when i shoot an animal, people will boo me. Then a bug harrasses them and they kill it without a blink of the eye.

My father was a man who loved nature more than anything. Thats where his life was, that is where he died. I was one of the first people to find him at the place of death. It was late in the evening and he probably died early afternoon. It was out in the open, next to a clay pigeon shooting terrain.

When i was a child, so many times he let me accompany him on the hunt. And so many times i stood next to him as we saw the animal being shot by this hunter who was my dad. He loved to hunt, though i knew he felt hunting is not a blessing. Strange as it is, he could not stand animals in pain. This man, my dad, was lying there in the field, far away from any road. It really struck me to see him lying there, like i had seen dead creatures so many times.

My father wasn´t ill, he just missed my mum who passed away six months earlier. And just as i am writing this, a bird flies into my house. I know her, she comes to my garden every morning when i throw a slice of bread for her and her partner. She goes straight to the other side of the room, wants to escape through the window. But she can't. I think its great she visits me, but the bird is not giving up, not at ease. I see how she's hurting herself against the window, flying up and down. I catch her and let her out. There she goes.

No need to paint her. No need to paint any animal actually. No need to paint my dad, or any fellow human, nor his actions.

PG: Your enemy is always right

2005-02-16T00:32:00.000+01:00

A few years ago i attended the event 'Creativity and ethics'. One of the speakers was a young guy, i think 26 at that time. He was a professional demonstrator from when he was 16, going out on the streets, throwing stones at the police and stuff. When i talked to him he worked as an IT-person for an organization i think it was Greenpeace.

Up to that day i had severe prejudice against people like him. Having never met them, i knew they were all bad and useless, in fact a threat to society. It was on that day that i asked this young man about his passion. Why he did what he did.

Something changed inside my mind from that day on. The thing i remember was that i started to understand that each and every voice has a message of value to those addressed. Usually these people don't want to hear the voice; think of what Greenpeace did to Shell, the South African boycot etc.

Here is the lesson i learned. If someone upsets me, be it in business or in private life, i should go out, pay the person a visit and listens to what (s)he has to say. I should try not to argue, i should try to learn. Knowing my own arguements, telling them is not the same as learning.

From my personal experience, this can be a very harsh task. I found myself not ready for a long long time. In fact, there is only one person here on earth that i am still not ready for. Needless to say she's the only person so far who has really introduced me to this wasteland outside my comfort zone. But don't let this interfere with your life. After all, if you did what i did you'd end up having my problems right?

Check HERE for an example of what could happen...

ATTN: Attention course MBSR

2005-02-14T22:10:00.000+01:00

The site of Johan Tinge offers attention training as a means of stress reduction. The course is based up on the work by dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn called "Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction" (MBSR). This lead to the Stress Reduction Clinic (1979) at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, Worcester (USA)

ATTN: attention and the critical moment

2005-01-30T19:28:00.000+01:00

I concentrate on Wealth Dynamics because the feeling inside me is that it is the same model as the attention model. And the best part of it is : it has been worked out, it is a stable product. This mirror of WD is the one least moving, and therefore the best entrance for me to hold the attention model against.

WEALTH = VALUE x LEVERAGE

In my attempt to convert the wealth formula into an attention formula, i came across this problem with the formula where this one dimension was missing. This can be easily seen, as there are 8 profiles and only two dimensions (value and leverage).

Now in the dialogue we want to avoid the "not invented here" syndrome. So i started out by assuming the formula is totally correct, and only then search for what is missing. I have come to the conclusion that leverage has two dimensions, not one. As such it can be written as A x B.

2**3 = 8 right? wealth = value x leverage seems to have only 2 dimensions. now lets have a look at them.

WEALTH = VALUE x LEVERAGE

WEALTH = VALUE x { A x B }

VALUE
2 polarities of value: innovation and timing.
Innovation is value created through new products, systems, ideas.
Timing is value created by buying low, selling high, timing the deal.

This is the dimension of space (innovation) and time (timing). This dimension of "serial time" is just another mental space dimension. Innovation is spring (new), going from innovation to timing is summer, timing is autumn (harvest), going from timing to innovation is winter. The value part is the visible or static part of the equasion.

LEVERAGE
2 polarities of leverage: multiply and magnify.
Multiply is reducing to lowest level: "How can this be done without me?"
Magnify is increasing to highest level: "How can this only be done with me?"

Accepting the formula to be correct, and also accepting the space/time dimension to be correct, which is VALUE, it means that the leverage part has the dynamic part of the equasion. There is another possibility which i ponder upon, and maybe we should investigate this further. It is the possibility that the equasion in itself is static. Look at it as a photograph of life. It is correct everytime you look, but it is not life itself because life can be photographed but is not a picture itself. This other possibility would therefore introduce the life part, or quantum part, or uncertainty principle, or whatever you would call it.

For a sportsman who is controlling time, at the critical moments they increase their processing speed and slow down time and hit the ball just right. When they look back at the game, the critical moments are very vivid, and the gaps in between appear to have gone by very fast.

Now, back to the formula. In terms of attention, VALUE is the source of attention (INPUT -> BLACK BOX -> OUTPUT). So VALUE is the part where attention is coming from. LEVERAGE is the destination of attention (OUTPUT). So LEVERAGE is the part where attention is going to. Now we have two dimensions: VALUE is paying attention to what is inside a person, while LEVERAGE is paying attention to what is outside a person.

Example#1: I am a supporter. On the VALUE axis i score ZERO, on the LEVERAGE axis i score MAX. Essentially what this means is that i am a parasite. I do not use any of my own attention (VALUE), i use all of other people's attention (LEVERAGE).

Example#2: I am a creator. On the VALUE axis i score MAX, on the LEVERAGE axis i score ZERO. Essentially what this means is that inside me there is a source of attention that needs to get out of my system as quickly as possible. I use all of my own attention (VALUE), i use none of other people's attention (LEVERAGE).

Please remember that this is not about morale. It is about streaming. If there is only creators, the system will block because the outside space is quickly filled with attention until it blocks. The stream cannot continue until some other profile takes in attention, thus making space for creators to fill up the outside again. This is why Supporter and Creator make such a great attention stream.

However, the third dimension is the BLACK BOX. And this is where 4 profiles become 8 profiles. It is the QUANTUM dimension of IMPLODE versus EXPLODE, of disappear (black hole) versus appear (the introduction of parallel time, speeding up, etc.). I wonder what label is appropriate?

An entrepreneur who is controlling time will look back and see that their times of greatest opportunity can be replayed frame-by-frame and in fact their entire wealth creation was created in these critical moments. Everything in between was just filling.

The four primary profiles : CREATOR, SUPPORTER, TRADER and LORD. They do not want to keep the attention in the BLACK BOX. They want to get rid of it as quickly as possible. In the summary below i will call this REJECT.
The four secondary profiles : STAR, DEAL MAKER, ACCUMULATOR and MECHANIC. They are completely happy to keep the attention in the BLACK BOX. In the summary below i will call this ACCEPT.
Here's the time element. Here's the critical moment. This is about timing, but really it is about attention.

Summary: The Attention Profile Square
CREA: SRC=inside BB=reject DST=outside
STAR: SRC=inside BB=accept DST=outside
SUPP: SRC=outside BB=reject DST=outside
DEAL: SRC=outside BB=accept DST=outside
TRAD: SRC=inside BB=reject DST=inside
ACCU: SRC=inside BB=accept DST=inside
LORD: SRC=outside BB=reject DST=inside
MECH: SRC=outside BB=accept DST=inside

Please continue the dialogue. These are only my first thoughts. Your input is highly appreciated (since i'm a supporter lol).

ATTN: Solve et Coagula

2005-01-25T19:21:00.000+01:00

About time and speed.

There is this wonderful law of two in nature, the law of apparently opposites, in this case the apparently opposites of space (m) and time(h) ==> speed (mph).

Paradox exists only because we have the wrong perception or assumption.

One of the observations is that they look opposite (i.e. 2 dimensions) but really they are not (i.e. 1 dimension, or more accurate 0 dimensions). The reason that i think they are opposite is that i stand in between them, and i cannot see them both. So i project one to bend like 90 degrees. This way i can see both. But still i cannot see myself within this dimension. Hence the flaw.

A few months ago i attended an open class on astrology. The teacher had this great way of showing the movements of the planets. One of us stood in the middle of the class, she was the sun. A second person was the earth, about 3 ft away from the sun. I was the moon. The teacher said to me go run reverse clockwise around the earth. And to the earth he said go walk reverse clockwise around the sun. The sun should just stand still.

And so we did. During this exercise i had to accelerate when coming from behind the earth, and slow down in my orbit when ahead of the earth. Afterwards the teacher asked me : so what did you feel? And i said it feels like my orbit is elastic, like i make this egg-shape movement. He said yes you have just felt the orbit as it occurs in reality.

I can not even begin to tell u what a huge impact this experience, this circle which does not feel like a circle, had on my perception of reality. The experience was like an earthquake to me. Within this law of two there is this other observation of SOLVE ET COAGULA. I could feel all these observations at one time, how they are essentially the same: separate and unite, dissolve and bind, contract and (??? - like breathing out).

With attention directed towards other parts of the human complex (body + electric shields + ...) it is possible to "feel" this. I think in each person there are instruments that we seldom use, not because they are extinct but because we have learned to serve all of our attention to our mind. To be able to regulate attention means to me to have the ability to make choices in life. I have this feeling that more than 98% of my attention goes directly into my belief system. I want to undo this. And because i am the world, if i can undo the whole world will notice. I hope to create a new way of teaching, but it is as hard for me to surpass my mind as it is for anybody else. So i need to bring it the outside, by projection, by dialogue. I see this happen with you the reader and me the writer. We're on this road together.

ATTN: attention and the sixth sense

2005-01-25T18:04:00.000+01:00

Ever since the tsunami i get flooded by email from people saying ANIMALS sensed the upcoming event days before. Also it is said that tribes that were least affected by modern society have the least casualties, simply because they went to higher ground days before the tsunami.

I don't know if all this is true. But i was wondering what if. What if the attention river is like a canal to modern humans? What if the dikes (here u go, a Dutch word) near this river need improvement? What if the attention river has no ways anymore to escape this unnatural path? What if the path to these sixth sense is not gone but just cut off? What if we invest in recapturing the KNOWLEDGE, like Rupert Sheldrake is doing despite all critics? Wouldn't it be worth to have a look at it?

ATTN: attention and the flow of time

2005-01-25T09:43:00.000+01:00

Let me start by saying i have no idea what FLOW is in the context of attention.

In my current understanding, time only exists within this part of the human complex that i would refer to as the head-brains. Recent re-discovery of the BELLY BRAIN made me realize that there is some EVIDENCE for a physical distribution of attention. Hence i came up with the metaphore of the electric circuit.

I believe the attention river is like a CPU, it can never stop unless it is powered off. So where does this attention go? Part of the attention will go to the mind (as part of the head-brains). This mind, a tool as far as i'm concerned, is like a serial device. It can only do one thing at a time. Therefore, it needs these four dimensions of length, width, height and time. Kant may have mentioned even more dimensions. The fact that time and space really originate from the same source needs imo no further explanation.

Now, consider the fact that cause and effect are mere points along a time line. A mind cannot view them together, because its a serial device. But if i choose to send my attention to some other part of the human complex than the mind, for instance to this belly brain, then synchronicity starts to appear - which is ofcourse just a word the mind uses for something totally beyond its abilities.

What i am trying to say is - when time seems to slow down, like F1 racers report to happen when they are driving top speed - the attention river flows less into the head-brains, and more into other parts of the human complex. Currently i think that about 99.9% flows directly into my unconscious mind, which i call my transparent belief system. If the saying "time is your most valuable asset" is true, then i believe we human beings have infinite assets. Howmuch wealth is beyond unlimited wealth? What if i could decrease this waste of attention for as little as 0.1% ? Would it double my amount of energy?

With my quest for "What is attention?" i seek ways of exploiting this unlimited wealth. My Ecademy club Attention as a product is only a first attempt. The word "training" comes to mind...

PG: How to do nothing? Lesson#1 : the will-do matrix

2005-01-25T01:37:00.000+01:00

Today i would like to introduce to you the Will-Do Matrix, courtesy of JIM VAN DEN BEUKEN.

Now Jim has made a beautiful set of cards called Pioneer and Pirates. Card number 8 from the "Be Wise" category is titled "What do you want?" - "Feel what you want, do what you want".

Reflection:
You know what you want if you feel what you like. Your will aims your creative energy at the difference between who you are and what you become. To want is rather an intuitive feeling than a wining action or duty. What would you like to be? What would you like to do? What would you like to not-do? Making contact with your intuitive will is seeking your destiny. Have to is the world according to others. Want to is the world according to yourself.

Will-do Matrix
Make a list of all activities that you spend time, attention and money on every month again (Include things like watching tv, traveling, sleeping etc). Divide the activities into four categories.

A) Activities that you DO and WANT to keep doing
Think of 3 ways to add even more quality and pleasure from these activities
B) Activities that you DO but DONT WANT to do
Think of a list for these activities to either increase your pleasure doing them, let other people do them or say goodbye to them.
C) Activities that you DONT DO and DONT WANT to do either
Accept the fact that you don´t want to do them, keep on saying no and explaining to other people.
D) Think of activities that you DONT DO but WANT to start doing
Choose one that gives you energy when you think of it. Start your plan within 24 hours.

Well, this was the Jim part. So where do we go from here?

First of all, take a piece of paper. Then draw the matrix, easy enough, draw a box and divide into 2x2.
The vertical (Y) axis is DO for the upper half, and DONT DO for the lower half.
The horizontal (X) axis is , the other axis is DONT WANT for the left part, and WANT for the right part.
If it is still too difficult, or better yet if you do not need this course on doing nothing, have a look at the artist impression.

Next, there is an evolution in this matrix. Like all movements in nature, its direction is reverse clockwise.

Movement#1: Going from (B) to (C) - the CleanUp
We find ourselves in the left half of the matrix, which is the DONT WANT section. The movement your activities make is from DO to DONT DO. It reads `well I used to do these activities but i stopped doing them`. Remember, quadrant C is your best friend. This is your trashcan for things done in the past. You have grown beyond doing them. Accepting this fact is crucial. You may need to reread the Reflection here.

Now, when you start NOT DOing them, people will probably notice. I mean, why else would you keep on doing them, right? If this question is other than a no-brainer to you, then you should really stop doing whatever you do instantly, and start contemplating the Reflection above. However, getting beyond this point took me about all of my life. Well, maybe reflection is my numer one DO and WANT activity.

Anyway, when you move an activity in the DONT WANT hafl from DO to DONT DO, you will not save time immediately. This is a common mistake. Here is what happens.
People need to get used to you not doing these activities any longer. And because they noticed, they need to change. Now the funny thing with human brains is, that they are not built to accept change. Unless ofcourse it means their brains need to spend less effort than before.
So you need to prepare for two actions. One is that you communicate to people you don´t do these activities any more. It won´t do you no good, because i told you about human brains. But it needs to be done. So then it really comes down to the second part, which is resistance. You need to teach the other person´s brains that convincing you to do the things you no longer want to do will cost them more effort than any other solution. This is where studying a character like Wally is extremely useful. Like in networking, you need to build up trust with the other person that you won´t give in, no matter how hard they try. You might want to study psychology to become aware of how extinction works. It is like this: when you say NO only nine out of ten times, people will forget all but this one time YES. So when you start this cycle, have plenty and i mean plenty of time to say no. It is an investment in your credibility, an investment in your own future as an expert in doing nothing.

Movement#2: Going from (A) to (B) - the Leverage
This time, we find ourselves in the upper half of the matrix, which is the DO section. The movement your activities make is from WANT to DONT WANT. It reads `well I used to like these activities but now i dont anymore`. See how easy it is? Before you know it, these activities are on their way to your best friend, quadrant C the TrashCan. Here is what to do.

Go study managers like Dilberts Boss. As Jim said, there are three roads to choose from. From the perspective of doing nothing, there is obviously only one road. You say goodbye to these activities, and move them on to the trashcan (C) as quickly as possible. However, sometimes you can gain a good friendship by exploiting your network to see if you can make someone else happy by letting them do the activity. If this too is impossible, choose road number three.

This is the road where you increase the pleasure you have in activities that you dont want to do anymore. Having tried road#1, there is bound to be a person who will stand up against you not doing them anymore. Keep an eye on this person, for he´s responsible for the activity. Remember, this is the person that should actually be doing this activity that you didn´t want to do in the first place. You may think this person is ahead of you in the art of doing nothing. But wait, you have an advantage. Study this person in depth, then you will know what to do. Chances are he´s too busy to do the activity, and then came up with the idea of having you do it. So the simple tactic is to go back to this person and ask them what he wants you to do, and why you should be the one to do it. Be stupid. Be naive. Don´t even think of trying to understand what it is. Here is where the investment is leveraged.

The outcome of these conversations are either one. Or this person will respect you as an equal, and only then a whole new life will open up for you. Or this person has promised to someone else that this activity will be done, and then he´s in deep trouble because you are in no hurry at all. This means that you do this person a favour. See why studying this person (and especially his environment) is so important? When this person realizes you hate the activity but you´ll do it just because of him, you will have a friend for life. Again, the extinction rule from psychology basic class will be to your extreme advantage. After nine times `why` (a NO would kill you instantly) this one time YES will be remembered forever.

Movement#3: Going from (D) to (A) - the Value
Are you still with me? Great. By the time you reach this level, life becomes a wonderful thing. You finally get to choose from all activities that you WANT to do, which is located in the right half of the matrix. The movement your activities make is from DONT DO to DO. It reads `well I would like to do these activities but i have not been able to`.
This ofcourse is not a quote from an expert. But you are well on your way of becoming one.

You may think: what should i choose? I never had the time to think of activities that i want to do, i was too busy with all these other activities! Again, please go and consult the Reflection. Now, making a choice may sound piece of cake, but really it is not. In order to make a choice, you need this measurement device called intuition. This my friend is where this exercise is all about. Why do you think did it take so long to get you here? Why were you so busy doing all these nasty little things that you don´t like? Is is because you owe the world? Is it because feeliig happy is last on the list? With duties first? Maybe Nelson Mandela was right when he mentioned something like the biggest of all fears is to be totally free? Maybe there was a reason for you to do all these DONT WANT activities?

I will let go of you now. You may have thought saving time is gonna make you happy :-) Well, go on and study one of these two characters. It all depends on what you like. Is it Dogbert? Or would you rather be like Catbert?

Movement#4: Going from (C) to (D) - the Womb of Creation
This is like satori for experts at doing nothing. The section you are in now is the DONT DO half. Whatever movement comes forth, in the end it will mean you just do nothing. Did you ever think people could come this far? The answer is ofcourse YES.

My favourite object of study is a character by the name of the Garbageman. And yes, without intuition you have no instrument to weigh the consequences of any choice. With only your mind at hand, each choice weights exactly the same, which is zero pounds. Welcome to reality. Welcome to the world of response ability. Give me your hand. You´ve made it.
----
Ron
Let the dialogue commence...
One can not change and remain the same person.

ATTN: speed and volume

2005-01-24T00:54:00.000+01:00

Speed (value) and volume (leverage) are shown in the attention picture.

The VOLTAGE shows the VALUE DIFFERENTIATION (hi-lo)
The AMPERE shows the RIVER WIDTH.

Attention is like the water in the river. In itself it means nothing, just like the paper of which money is made of means nothing, despite the millions invested in the techniques used to make the paper uncopyable.

With VOLTAGE --> VALUE --> it is the diff between the amount of attention that i PAY and RECEIVE.

With AMPERE --> LEVERAGE --> it is the number of "attention particles" passing by at any given moment. It is like the WIDTH of the RIVER.

Here is the attention quality:
- pure attention can be mixed with INTEREST --> if i think something is important then i will give it more attention; hence the attention will get dense (basic belief = called the EGO) and thus the flow (speed) will decrease.
("interest is part of my identity")
- pure attention can be mixed with JUDGEMENT --> if i think something is absolutely true then i will no longer see any evidence against it.
("the more transparent my belief, the more certain i are of being right")

How to spend attention?
- i can spend attention on RESISTANCE

Resistance is like the leverage. The more resistance, the wider the river, the slower the attention stream. Resistance is measured in OHM. The (transparent) belief that i pay attention to (e.g. the EGO) is like the lamp in an electric circuit.
Interesting thing about the lamp is that its resistance changes with temperature (= EMOTION).

This is just a short introduction to what attention is from my "view from the hill" hillside. But please do not agree with me yes or no, because then you are stuck (Krishnamurti). Let us find out together.

ATTN: Redefinition of human behaviour in terms of attention

2004-12-10T02:25:00.000+01:00

Talking to one of my friends yesterday, i heard myself say to her that i want to redefine the current terms in psychology, break them apart and recreate them into a new attention paradigm. I might even be on the look for the holy grail, the ultimate answer to the question why people act in the first place.

Here's an example. The definition is self-esteem. The Dutch word for it is eigenwaarde (self value).

If my self-esteem is very low, i need to do something about it. So i want the attention of other people, because energy follows attention and i need the energy. But maybe i don't want to face reality, maybe i had a worse than bad youth, maybe i'm scared of other people and i need to flee into my own fantasy world. I might become a writer like Patricia Highsmith, a celebrity like Andy Warhol, or a celebrity murderer like Mark David Chapman. Dutch author CONNIE PALMEN wrote a very interesting book about these and other people.

How could i translate this need for energy into the currency of attention? How to estimate the value of my own self? What scale should i use? What is the amount of energy / attention that is left inside my body?

So the question is: how could i redefine human behaviour in terms of basic need for energy and ways to get it? What basic terms in human behaviour could be re-termed in this way? If someone could understand what is happening here, then maybe we could do something about it.

ATTN: stages in the Thoughtstorm Group Process

2004-12-01T00:27:00.000+01:00

Today I want to introduce to you a group of people from the Netherlands. We seek to find the answer to one of these fundamental questions about I and WE. We ask ourselves: what happens to me if I become WE? Do I dissolve? What does this border look like? Or maybe this border is not really a border, maybe it is an illusion? How do we know? How can we tell?

In the process we use several techniques. One of them is the Thoughtstorm. Reflections on a group process, conducted by my good friend Berry

Stages in the Thoughtstorm Group Process

by Berry Cloosterman, Avatar Wizard

A few years ago, a group of people from the Netherlands started to use the Thoughtstorm method on a regular basis. The author, being the initiator of this group, observed certain stages in their meetings. He would like to share his observations with the Avatar community. In this article the stages are related to another method called ‘creative thinking’ or sometimes ‘lateral thinking’.

Collecting and formulating the question

Shedding the known ideas. Convergence - Divergence

Playfull/creative phase. Continuity is based on each participant’s personal commitment

The bottleneck. The mind empties. The ego uncouples

Intuitive phase. From a stop of thinking to inner silence

Practical development. Sharing the solidarity and development of the answer

Much love and insight for you and your loved ones (!)
Berry Cloosterman

ATTN: a theory about attention

2004-11-22T17:51:00.000+01:00

For some reason, order seems to be a vital ingredient in wellbeing. Everything being in the right place is a state that i would call
SATORI or enlightment.
Satori i think means you've climbed a mountain, and now you're on top of it, enjoying the view that you longed for. But at the same time reaching the top is reaching a state of inertia Where would you go from here?

I'm in a group that uses the THOUGHTSTORM technique to find answers to these and other questions. The question this time was: "why do we make life so difficult for ourselves?" and the corecept was : "I can't do otherwise". In order to live, i.e. contrary to staying inert, I the Ego, need to reach satori until i get there, and then i need to get on, away from satori.

I have a theory of an order beyond what i can see, or even feel. DAVID BOHM is one of the people who have worked out such a theory. I think of myself as a cell in an organism. I don't know what the use of living of this organism is. It is beyond my scope. But i do believe that there is a place, which i call my destiny, that is reserved for me - it is my rightfull place. When i was born, i was dropped somewhere near by or far from this destiny; i don't know. The salmon wouldn't know where the origin of the river is, but it starts to swim at some point in its life.

Life is about movement. The earth orbits around the sun, I orbit around my destiny. I call this movement attention. The thing is, my destiny is no absolute place, it is a relative place. Relative to other people. Therefore, in order to reach my destiny, i need to DIALOGUE with other people; with my neighbours. And as much as i need them to find my destiny, they need me to find theirs.

I live, therefore i move. Even when i think i don't move, i orbit around my destiny. My idea of not moving is an idea created by perspective - i look at my destiny, and i measure the distance between me and my destiny. If the distance doesn't change, i may believe that i'm not moving. But my movement is the orbit, the circle around my destiny. Attention is like gravity, other people are like other planets, or comets, or sometimes black holes. They change my orbit, and i change theirs.

I believe inside me there is a measuring device capable of measuring the distance between me and my destiny. This is what i call my intuition. It relates to other people, so in fact it is not really "inside" me, and it is also not "outside" me. My conscious mind can sometimes capture what my intuition measures. For instance, if the amount of synchronicity in my life increases, then apparently i move towards my destiny. If I feel that I need less effort to live my life, then it comes into my mind that i'm moving towards my destiny. It also works the other way around. If i try to do something and it costs me a lot of enery, if it won't go the way i would like it to go, then apparently i drift away from my destiny.

So what is attention? Attention is the movement, the energy, the language that people use to find their place in this organism. The place is relatively known, but not absolute. We're in the system / the organism / the order, so we cannot have a look on the system itself and at the same time be conscious of the fact that we are part of it. This i think is a property of the human brain that we cannot view two perspectives (part and whole) at the same time.

We can however feel that we in fact are the organism; this i call awareness.

- November 2004
(still puzzling...)

ATTN: attention in science

2004-11-20T06:06:00.000+01:00

I talked to Eric Postma, he's a professor in artificial intelligence at Maastricht University here in Holland. I have translated his email to the best of my knowledge. Here it is.

Dear Ronald,

Thank you for your message. I find your questions regarding attention very inspiring. I distinguish in your questions three categories:

(1) questions regarding the mechanism of attention
(2} questions regarding the interhuman and emotional aspects of attention
(3) questions regarding the "esoteric" aspects of attention

As you will understand i am definitely interested in questions of category (1). There is a great deal of knowledge about the mechanisms of attention, but (like i said) that doesn't mean that one knows what attention is. I think it is because questions of category (2) have not been investigated enough. Cognitive neuroscience have (until now) mostly aimed at the individual aspects of attention. One the one hand because of the [tijdgeest] (sign of the times ?; literally = time spirit) and on the other hand because of practical restrictions (it is more difficult to do attention experiments with multiple persons). So it won't surprise you that I consider the questions of category (2) scientifically extremely defying.

Remains the questions of category (3). These questions may (and must) be posed, but as yet there are no indications for a mysterious force non-describable from the current scientific framework. In other words, a scientist can not (yet) "handle" it. To philosophise about it can and must be done. Surely scientific progress is partly based upon "crazy" or "esoteric" ideas. You could make a comparison to the (previously) esoteric subject "awareness". Recently past away DNA investigator (and Nobel prize winner) Frances Crick undertook serious attempts to explain awareness in terms of (individual) brain processes. He failed doing so, but he did manage to place the subject on the research agenda. The central questions are "what is awareness" and "where is it located?" Like attention, awareness exists by the [gratie] (virtue? literally = grace) of "other people". The solution should in my opinion be searched for in questions of category (2).

I hope this gives you an image of my opinion regarding attention and the questions thereabout.

Best regards,
Eric Postma

PoD: the rock concert example

2004-11-20T04:53:00.000+01:00

What i'm about to say is PoD from the past - it's what i've come up with so far. I hope with this thread to interact, or "seduce people". I believe in dialogue - multiple people creating what neither one could on her/his own.

Now, for the concept of PoD, it is streaming. This means you don't pay in advance, nor do you get a refund. You can never borrow this type of "money", nor can you have it in your pocket; all of this because it is streaming.

I'll try to visualize the concept of streaming. The way I see it, you negotiate about the price in everlasting dialogue, i.e. you negotiate about the price each and every millisecond. Also, each time the price has been settled, you make this one transaction. Mind you, "one" indicates there's a beginning and an end to it, but really the duration of both negotiation and delivery is a split-second thing. Under a microscope you would probably see that negotiation takes place during delivery, because the concept of time and place would no longer hold under such circumstances. After the split-second the whole process starts again. Ofcourse this is not what you would see on a human-conscious level. On a conscious level, you would see that the stream goes as long as the both of you want it to go; it stops as soon as either one closes the channel.

To further visualize: think of attention as the "money". Where do you keep your attention if you don't spend it? Where will you borrow attention if you are short of it? What happens to your attention stream when you listen to someone talking to you and all of a sudden something else "draws" your attention? At first, it may look like one stream of attention, directed to the person and later on to this new object. But when this person calls your name, you will realize that you are still with this person. Ergo, suddenly there are two streams.

Please let me know if this makes any sense. I find it hard to express the very essence of it - yes the same with attention. Imagine a horizontal timeline, from past to present to future. The Tao moment of "now" is not on this timeline, it's a sideway (left and/or right turn) from the present. PoD is the transaction on this vertical dimension.

Best regards,
Ron

TDC: yesterday's meeting

2004-11-19T10:34:00.000+01:00

The Dutch Connection is a club with Ecademy. Eleven people came to Amsterdam to discuss the status with respect to innovation here in the Netherlands.

I had a wonderful night last night. A big compliment for the host, Colby, for asking each individual "why are you here?" and not settle until the person would fully agree with his or her own answer. In my case, I didn't really know what brought me to Amsterdam, it's quite a distance: 145 km from Borne at the other end of the A1 highway. I just felt I needed to go there.

Anyway, what I really liked about the people was their attitude. Frequently I meet people who want to be right. They want other people to explicitly confirm that they are right. Only then they are able to listen.

In this gathering however, the attitude was one of opportunity scouting, rather than judgement. I believe there was a common sense among this group of unique individuals. The credo from Indonesia "unity in diversity" holds here. Each person brought something to the team that was complementary to what the others would bring.

"Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

PoD : about infrastructure

2004-11-19T09:09:00.000+01:00

I came up with attention as a product, because the infrastructure for attention is already there. Once I found this solution to what seemed to be a problem, it occurred to me that it reveals possibilities beyond the original scope. I think the Internet could also be an adequate infrastructure. What is needed though is some kind of algerithm, heuristic or compression, because otherwise I believe a huge amount of data will need to stream from the mobile device or person through the infrastructure and vice versa.

One example: in a theatre having 500 seats, each spectator is a source of a PoD stream. Also, the owner of the theatre, maybe the people in the bank, and definitely the performers are sources of PoD streams as well. Now let's suppose I'm one of the spectators. In the ultimate situation, my sense of how I like or dislike the performance decides upon the value that i wish to pay for. So there's one stream of price/performance ratio going from me to the performers - they will stop the performance immediately if my price offer does not meet their price demand. But there are 500 people in the audience, so they might want to pay me to shut up - in other words to compensate for the price difference - because they would like the performance to continue. And since my evalutation is on a per second basis, this means huge amount of calculations in quite an interactive mode. All these data need to be combined somewhere, somehow. I hope you see the point of it.

PoD: a quantum theory of Economics

2004-11-17T05:25:00.000+01:00

My long term goal is to initiate the creation of a new form of economic transaction, which i called Pay on Demand (hereafter : PoD). A few years ago, I talked to the manager of a large bank here in Holland, who was responsible for the new business development. He thought the idea was great, but in his opinion no single company could provide the infrastructure required to implement PoD.

I never gave up though, and in further exploring the PoD concept, i developed this idea of a first implementation of PoD, which is attention as a product. The quest for what attention really is - there's another thread here at the club where you can join in. In the thread presented here, I would like to invite you all in on the further exploration of PoD concepts. I hope that the findinds in this thread will lead to a better understanding of attention and vice versa.

The very essence of PoD lies in the granularity of transactions going towards infinity. PoD is not based upon trading in terms of give and receive atomic entities. PoD is based upon streams of zero-second transactions that in accumulated masses of zillions per second look like a traditional (=batchwise) transaction. In this way, PoD is the analogue (or rather: dialogue) way of doing business.

ATTN: Bart

2004-11-15T20:31:00.000+01:00

I would like to share yesterday's experience I had with Bart.

Bart is the youngest son of my sister. He is about 20 years of age. When he was born, something happened to him. Shortage of oxygen, something like that. Anyway, there is a deep bond between the two of us. My sister thinks that our characters are much the same, and so do I. This bond is what I wanted to talk about, for i feel that it has something to do with attention, the subject of this thread.

Yesterday I met Bart. He's always glad to see me and so am I. Everytime we meet, he will tell me his latest experience over and over again. I sat next to him. Our conversation went like this

Hey Ronald
-- Bart has a big smile on his face
Yeah what's up?
-- I look at him. There's something big he wants to share with me. I bend forward, don't wanna miss a thing.
I was at a party earlier today. And you know what? My friend Edwin was there too !!!.
-- And then he shows me this big smile
-- I can feel this fantastic experience he had when he saw his friend Edwin.

I used to be listening to what he had to say, trying to understand his words. Who is Edwin? Edwin is my friend. Do I know Edwin? By that time Bart would smile and say nothing. And then I would realise it's impossible for him to answer this question - he really wouldn't know. But yesterday was different.

That's great news Bart!
-- I can feel his great joy. We both smile in happiness.

Then I get distracted. Someone else says something to me. I reply. Then i get back to Bart. And he repeats.

You know what? Edwin was there too !
-- Again this big smile, his face full of joy

Somehow i think i miss the point. Why does he repeat this?
I notice how he is fully aware that (part of) my attention is away from him and back inside myself.
Bart waits patiently until my attention is back with him.

-- and again he repeats
Hey Ronald, my friend Edwin was there too, you know!

Now i'm really touched. Is this possible? Could there be another world than the world of language, of understanding words? A world in which i'm the disabled, the foreigner? A world in which Bart is the native speaker? Is this the world of attention?

This feeling is getting to me. It's like i'm standing on the border of two worlds, one on the inside and one on the outside. This is the first time I realize in depth howmuch the culture around me has influenced my thougths, my very being. Now that i write this, i feel a deep emotion coming out from the inside. Yes, there is another world. I begin to see.

Ron

ATTN: The Authentic Self by Andrew Cohen WIE Magazine

2004-11-14T16:33:00.000+01:00

The Authentic Self that Andrew Cohen talks about is what i mean by attention. I was deeply touched by the transcript.

Best regards,
Ron

ATTN: Can it be done?

2004-11-14T10:29:00.000+01:00

If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,'
then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

- Vincent Van Gogh

Martin Buber is one of the people who has shown it is possible to describe the impossible. I believe he's a painter with words.

What i would like to do is connect what we know to what we do. Krishnamurti said some beautiful things like "the mind will make you believe that love and action are two separated things, but really they cannot be separated". I think there are many ways in which attention as a product could indeed "heal" people. My purpose is less stretching than to heal people.

In Gestalt the proverb goes "the whole is earlier and more than the sum of parts". I think the same goes for attention. I don't know what is good for each individual. But i feel that we, the rich people in the world, the ones with the internet and all, have earned our material wealth at the cost of the immaterial attention. I think attention is a political issue; i think the people should put it on the agenda so the politicians can discuss the issue. Note how they cannot discuss a nonexistent issue. I think political work does not include making attention an issue. That is something we, the people, should do. It is only when attention has become a political issue, politicians can do their work.

The issue, as far as i can see it, is this: that the "short of attention" diseases that strike our western world may be revealed, out of their taboos, much the same way as the hunger and polluted water diseases in some african countries are revealed on television. I say we show this disease on television.

But first I would find out what attention is. In the sense of project management, one cannot come up with a problem without a proper solution attached. In creative thinking, a solution is another word for redefining the problem. My quest is about redefinition - about what attention really is.

Best regards,
Ron

ATTN: What is attention?

2004-11-13T04:44:00.000+01:00

The question is "what is attention?" . i put down to words some examples of what i mean by attention. but since i feel i do not have found the very heart of it, i could not give you a clear definition - hence my question of what attention is.

In Western psychology, attention means selective perception. Focus, if you will, all the way from the sensory input to cortex elaboration, and all stages in between (filtering etc). This is not - or rather, only part of - what i mean by attention.

If i were to describe attention, it would be the activity that occurs inside me, in a place i call my intuition. This place is part of me and at the same time is not a part of me. The way i see it, my intuition is a meeting point where i meet other people. Call it empathy, telepathy or whatever. I can not feel my intuition, but i can feel the activity going on in there. The activity, which i call attention, is a feeling that is sometimes inside my head: in the back of my head when i am sucked into the past, into memories and thoughts; or in my forehead when i focus. Sometimes it is all around me, inside and outside, like when i walk in a forest and listen to the conversation of the birds; it's a kind of awareness. And when i meet other people, i can feel how my attention sometimes gets diffuse, less dense, mingling with the other person's attention.

If you ask me why i chase for a definition, i do not know. But i feel there is an instrument inside my body that can pass the borders of time and space, like in a 5th dimension. My brain cannot understand - at least one of the reasons is that it is limited by the dimensions that Kant talked about. Also, brain functions in a serial way - i cannot understand with my brain that past, present and future are here at the same time, simply because it cannot look in multiple directions concurrently. With attention, i can feel all directions of space and time. Yet i cannot do something simple like predicting the future, or create any future that i want. It is not because these things are not there (have a look at quantum theory, or the book The Field by Lynn McTaggart, for some examples) but because my intuition is still blocked, filtered if you will, by a lot of beliefs that i still carry around. My ultimate goal is to clean up all resistance and get to a state of superconductance. I think attention is a basic food for each person, and in essence it is also what people are made of.

I don't know if this helps or makes things more difficult. Anyway, in his book "Attention and presence" Gerard Bodifée wrote - and i translate from Flemish so beware :-)
"God is a creator, not by being at the start of all, but by being their destiny. At the start there is only an amorph, unknowable emptiness. Destiny is a completion; it is the fullness of attention and of an existence without imperfectnesses. In the attention paying human being this destiny makes itself knowable and gives even more direction to the continuing creation. Every conscious realisation eliminates something from the randomness that remains in the still immature cosmos".

Best regards,
Ron

ATTN: attention as punishment in court

2004-11-11T10:18:00.000+01:00

Attention could be used in court. Let us say we have a victim (V) of a crime committed by a criminal (C). Picture this: the situation is that the Criminal has done something wrong to the Victim. Now the Victim is hurt and (s)he wants revenge. Criminal should be punished. But what should the punishment be? We'll examine an extreme case, where the Criminal has killed the Victim's child.

What if the judge condemns Criminal to pay attention to Victim? What if he orders Victim to decide upon the time when the punishment is fullfilled? In a verdict like this, the Victim is the director of the Criminal's punishment. It appears that the roles of Criminal and Victim are reverted.

The situation arises where the Victim can not be satisfied; even the death of the Criminal will not bring back Victim's child. In an effort to avoid the experience of deep loss, Victim will refuse the Criminal's attention and call for revenge. In his/her eyes, the Criminal is no longer a human being; there is only the desire to share the pain: "I want you to feel what I feel". But then a strange thing happens. Criminal will ask the judge to be relieved of his punishment because (s)he can not deliver; Victim refuses to accept the attention and therefore the Criminal should no longer be bound to the punishment.

At first, this imaginary situation may look like a Kafka scene. In family constellations however, the rightful place of the facilitator is next to the Criminal, because the Criminal is often the weakest person in the system. I once heard a story about a tribe. If one of the tribe members became ill, the tribe would say "not this person is ill, but the whole tribe is ill and it becomes visible through this one person". Reality is often the exact opposite of what morale wants us to believe.

Back to the situation. The punishment will work in such a way that Victim needs to accept Criminal's attention. If not, Criminal can not deliver and will ask the judge to be set free. Victim and Criminal are tied up to one another; not only does the act of the Criminal have great consequences in the Victim's life, it is also up to Victim to call it even. The influence on each other's life shows a deep bond between the two. Victim can only accept Criminal's attention if (s)he is able to see Criminal as a human being. It is only then that Victim can step out of this deadly embrace and start the harsh task of facing the loss of his/her child. The Criminal's attention, at that point, is desperately needed. When time has come, Victim will realize that enough attention has been paid, and Criminal is set free to accept his/her own part of the karma. I would think that by that time, Victim should be able to help the Criminal likewise.

Mind you, this resembles the situation in South Africa when apartheid was no more and Mandela had to prevent civil war. I trust you all know what happened back then.

Best regards,
Ron

ATTN: What is attention?

2004-11-10T07:31:00.000+01:00

I dedicate this year (and probably most of next year) to the question of what attention is. I'm working on a white paper but i feel i haven't gotten into the very core of it. I believe that attention is the "power of mankind". With that i mean that when it comes down to the question "to act or not to act", the need for attention is what essentially makes all the difference. It occurred to me that the only way to find out about attention is to use attention itself. I think that is what the ancient buddhists meant by their proverb "attention is attention".

So I would like you to share your thoughts and experiences on the subject of attention.

Example: one proverb says "emotions, at the very core, always deal with the matter of life and death". You may have noticed that negative emotions (towards death) can take up a lot of attention. Some people i've met are capable of feeling attention flooding to the back of their head, where the amygdala is seated. (Amygdala is the center of freeze, fight or flight). This attention drain cannot continue endlessly. So the attention balance is headed towards bancrupcy. You need to increase either your own attention or get it from elsewhere. It's like an economy, but this time attention plays the money part. So how to increase solvability on your attention balance? How to stay alive?

If you want to add attention from others, there are two way that i know of. You either blame someone else, or you share your emotions with them. When you blame someone else, it is like attracting high risk venture capital. You won't go bancrupt but it wont do your solvability (aka self-esteem) any good.

On the other hand: sharing your emotions calls for an additional personal investment. Note that you already ran low on attention so this is not an easy decision to make. The risk is that the other person responds different from what you were hoping / expecting for. Then you are really in trouble. You may even need to slow down (burn-out: living on a minimum of attention). Now, if all goes well, the other person responds / connects / understands / has compassion. Then, some kind of accelerator is working. While the both of you feel that you hardly invest any attention, the outcome is that both have more attention than before. This is what creation is all about.

I hope my example is not too confusing - like i said i still haven't found the very core of attention. I hope some of you will join me on my quest, and share with me / us from what you've learned in life.

Thank you for your attention.
Best regards, Ron.

ATTN: What is attention?

2004-11-10T07:30:00.000+01:00

As you may have read in my profile, i dedicate this year (and probably most of next year) to the question of what attention is. I'm working on a white paper but i feel i haven't gotten into the very core of it. I believe that attention is the "power of mankind". With that i mean that when it comes down to the question "to act or not to act", the need for attention is what essentially makes all the difference. It occurred to me that the only way to find out about attention is to use attention itself. I think that is what the ancient buddhists meant by their proverb "attention is attention".

So I would like you to share your thoughts and experiences on the subject of attention.

Example: one proverb says "emotions, at the very core, always deal with the matter of life and death". You may have noticed that negative emotions (towards death) can take up a lot of attention. Some people i've met are capable of feeling attention flooding to the back of their head, where the amygdala is seated. (Amygdala is the center of freeze, fight or flight). This attention drain cannot continue endlessly. So the attention balance is headed towards bancrupcy. You need to increase either your own attention or get it from elsewhere. It's like an economy, but this time attention plays the money part. So how to increase solvability on your attention balance? How to stay alive?

If you want to add attention from others, there are two way that i know of. You either blame someone else, or you share your emotions with them. When you blame someone else, it is like attracting high risk venture capital. You won't go bancrupt but it wont do your solvability (aka self-esteem) any good.

On the other hand: sharing your emotions calls for an additional personal investment. Note that you already ran low on attention so this is not an easy decision to make. The risk is that the other person responds different from what you were hoping / expecting for. Then you are really in trouble. You may even need to slow down (burn-out: living on a minimum of attention). Now, if all goes well, the other person responds / connects / understands / has compassion. Then, some kind of accelerator is working. While the both of you feel that you hardly invest any attention, the outcome is that both have more attention than before. This is what creation is all about.

I hope my example is not too confusing - like i said i still haven't found the very core of attention. I hope some of you will join me on my quest, and share with me / us from what you've learned in life.

Thank you for your attention.
Best regards, Ron.

PG: Simplicity leads to fuzzy logic

2004-11-07T23:33:00.000+01:00

The quest for simplicity reminds me of the law of two, aka the law of apparently opposites. This law states that every movement has its opposite movement. If one is foreground, then the other is background.

A friend once told me his view, that a team could never exceed twelve persons. What about a company having 100,000 employees? Let's suppose complexity arises from mergers (companies, production chains etc). The opposite movement would then be movement from complexity to simplicity, and from bigger (mergers) to smaller (chunks). These movements are foreground movement, one can observe how reorganizations are in effect operations to simplify the scope of a CEO to this twelve person border.

The background movement however is that by the law of two, simplicity inevitably calls for complexity. Meaning that these big chunks are living organisms that interact. Management should therefore acknowledge the movement from a mechanical view (time-related thinking, cause-and-effect models) to a more organic approach (space-related thinking, quantum-type models).

Fuzzy logic has to do with relativity (more less / better worse). It is used in situations when by the time you know the exact outcome its too late to intervent, because meanwhile things have changed again. Managers that want to know what's inside the black box belong to a different world. A shift is needed.

ATTN: questions about attention

2004-08-27T18:05:00.000+02:00

My departure point is: people need attention as a kind of food. For people attention is (a source of) energy. From that point of view a number of questions arise. And those questions cover rather a broad area of science. For what is attention really? Can attention be measured? What's the composition of attention like; what physical characteristics are measurable; what qualitative properties does attention have? Where does attention come from? Where does the attention go to? How do you "pay" attention? How is it possible for something inanimate like a golden bracelet to "draw" attention? What is actually happening here? Can you store attention, for example in a painting? It is possible to point your attention at something? Can you avoid attention and if so, how do you do that? For the next ten minutes, don't think of a polar bear. Is "may i have your attention please" also a form of attention? Is attention the same as communication? And if so, can you determine the polarity of sender and recipient? Someone is watching television and I ask this person something, is the word jammer adequate or do I in fact draw part of the attention that was meant for the television? How aware are you, if you aim the attention of others? I look attentively in air, in the middle of on a busy shop square; the child of the baker will be a baker too. What happens here? Attention meets (draws) attention? Is there something like an attention sense inside the human body? Can you feel eyes in your back? I look in the air, beside me stands a blind person person. What happens? Can you draw someone's attention if you're not there? Is the attention of the painter the same attention as the attention of the person who looks at the painting? Does attention precede perception? Is there a maximum to the quantity of attention people can take in, process and spend? Is attention the same as energy? Example: I'm getting warm because you look at me == to me warmth indicates energy conversion. How does spreading your attention work? is it similar to focussing - or not focussing - of a spotlight? Suppose that undiluted attention is possible, how much would one person need on a daily basis?

-- what can attention be mixed with? and has it always to do with thinking?
--- with interests? example: conditional love - parents who stipulate the way in which children may express their love
--- with relations? example: wu wei is in a way approximately the reverse of reaction (reaction is the basis of a relation according to Krishnamurti)
- is occupation therapy a substitute for attention? and why does it or does it not work? what are the discriminating dimensions
- someone pays attention to me (gives me attention) and then i act differently. What happens here? Why can't i be the 2 year old child and just accept instead of responding?
- how do you attract attention? AIDA - you must do something extreme - is there a threshold on attention? above standard noise level?
- is attention the same as social cohesion?
- can you accumulate attention like in a battery?
- is there a need for attention?
- is attention flowing? (wave/particle)
- what about attention and familiarisation?
- how much attention can one give ? is there a maximum in loading or processing capacity?

Ron

PG: dynamic of nearly touch and then run off

2004-07-20T09:00:00.000+02:00

Today, I am walking with a friend along the Pieterpad, a cross country path here in the Netherlands. We are talking about our lives, and i tell her what happened at the Avatar course in 2002, the Family Constellations event in 2003 and the incident with my dad that same year.

I suddenly realize that there is a dynamic in my life that makes sense of all these experiences i´ve had. I visualized putting a window between me and the other person. I can see them, they can see me, but we can not touch. I want to get closer to them. Then i feel the glass of the window. I realize i can not touch them. And then i want them to go away.

This reminded me of the child in the glass box.

Pappa wanneer kom je weer bij ons thuis wonen?

2004-04-11T13:00:00.001+02:00

Zondag 11 april 2004.

11:00 uur
Naar papa. Karin en Marlies, met man en kids zijn er.

13:00 uur
Mijn dochter, ruim drie jaar oud, ze huilt en huilt. Ze blijft huilen als ik haar op bed leg. Tien minuten later kom ik bij haar kijken. Ze wil dat ik weer "bij ons thuis" kom wonen. Een diep verdriet welt in me op, ik huil en zeg dat het niet gaat en hoe ik het ook heel erg vind. Ik wil het niet. Ze ziet naar me, wordt stil en lijkt aan te voelen dat het leven soms zijn eigen beslissingen neemt.
We beginnen allebei te lachen, een enorme opluchting maakt zich van ons meester, het voelt aan als overgave. De rest van de middag is ze vrolijk, en als ik even later met haar broer naar oma ga (gisteren rode tulpen gekocht) ben ook ik stil van binnen. Ik verwacht dat zij niet langer over deze kwestie zal beginnen; ergens heeft ze de acceptatie een plek weten te geven.

PG: acceptance

2003-11-06T01:18:00.000+01:00

(PG = personal growth)

My sister Ivonne called me up, mum is getting worse again.
She won't come out of the bed any more.

Are we going to give her medication?
Only the one against the pain.
It could be over any day now.

Thursday and friday i'll be in Baarlo.
I planned to go to family constellations in Breda next saturday
but Marije let me know that I'm not needed
(that is our agreement: i let her know if I'm able to come, she lets me know if i'm needed)

Therefore i decided to go to Lichtenvoorde on friday night, and nowhere else.
Funny enough i have the idea that she will die on friday night, or saturday during the day.
That she will wait until i return home.

This evening i will go to the school in Zwolle.
Shouldn't i be with my mum?
I have no doubt, or maybe a little.

Maybe it is my wish to accompany her to the border,
and wave her goodbye.
Maybe this is also her wish.
She might wait on me.

I draw my own plan, and try to keep observing
how my desire and reality can sometimes be different

Sorrow is for me the strength to make my desire be different from reality
Acceptance is letting go of sorrow.

If i'm with my mother, i have no sorrow.
My strength is streaming through my hand on to her shoulders.
Her eyes start to shine bright whenever i touch her. I can feel it.

The farewell is intense, though i am miles and miles away from her.

Ronald.
5 november 2003 16:18

PG: the child in the glass box

2003-09-20T18:15:00.000+02:00

I drink coffee with my dad, before i leave for a 2 hours drive to the west coast. My dad tells me a story, it seems to come out of the blue. About one year before i was born, his sister gave birth to a little boy. My dad said that the kid was 2 months early, it had lived in a couveuse (glass box) for several days before it died.

This story is hitting me real hard. I rush into the car, and i start crying for about half an hour. Somewhere deep inside me a contact is made. I feel so relieved that this boy, whom i had never heard of, is recognized to have existed. I feel the connection between the child's grave and the glass box, and i get to understand why the people left. There were no words at that time.

PG: the Walk for Atonement

2003-09-01T09:02:00.000+02:00

For the first time in my life, i walk long distance. I baptised it the Walk for Atonement, named after one of the Avatar exercises. I feel like Harry Dean Stanton in PARIS, TEXAS.

My sister calls again from Thailand. The person who rents her house wants to leave this month, so the house is available from October first. This is great news.

During the walk (about 145 km in six days) a constant stream of synchronicity accompanies me which has never left me since.

PG: leaving home

2003-08-31T23:30:00.000+02:00

The moment i drive out the street, my cell phone rings. My sister Ivonne is calling from Thailand, asking me how I am doing. I park the car. This is unusual, she hardly ever calls and neither do i. I tell her i just left my wife and kids only minutes ago. I'm going to live with mum and dad for a while. This fighting marriage has exhausted me, first time in my life where things don't work out the way i wanted, despite the huge amount of energy invested. She tells me that the person who has rented her house in Holland may no longer be able to pay the rent. I might rent her house then. She thinks this would be somewhere in Januari 2004.

PG: about long-distant feelings

2003-08-13T09:02:00.000+02:00

I'm at work in Zoetermeer, a town about 80 km from where i live. I feel restless all morning, there's something back home that really worries me. By the time it's 2 pm i need to go home immediately.

During my drive home i suddenly realize that for the first time in our marriage, my wife is looking away from me, towards another man. When i come home she's very surprised. I ask her about my feeling. Yes there is someone, he's a really good friend. But don't you worry he's physically unattractive, i just need someone to talk to and this friendship feels great.

A few days later I ask her to think of another good friend, and then count the number of times a day she thinks of either one. Is there a significant difference? And then she comes to realize that she's in love with this man. She agrees to stop seeing him, she doesn't want to love him, just wants them to be good friends that's all.

But as it appears this is asking for the impossible.

PG: family constellations

2003-04-04T10:00:00.000+02:00

About 14 people have joined in on this 2 days event called family constellations. We are sitting in a wide circle in this empty room, all with our backs against the wall. Marije invites me to sit next to her. She wants to know my question.

I don´t know. Its like something is missing in my life. I tell her my feeling of a painted bird. As if the stork had dropped me on the wrong planet. She asks me if i want to have a look. I say yes i do. And then she says find the person in this group who will be your representant.

I look around and ask J. He agrees and stands up. I am instructed to stand behind J, place my hands on his shoulders, let go of all thoughts and follow my hands. We walk into this empty center of the room. I feel huge turbulent emotions inside. I turn him to the right, face towards the stove. Then Marije tells me to pick a seat. I go sit by the stove. Then i notice J is looking at me, i am right in front of his face. I dont want this, so i move out of his sight.

J stands in the middle. Marije asks him how the representant of Ronald is doing. J says he feels uncomfortable. He is unable to move. We wait to see what happens.

The pressure is hardly bearable. Then suddenly S joins the constellation. I have never seen this before. He says i am pulled into this system and i don´t know why. Marije says ok find your place. S stands behind J. His belly touches J´s back, and his arms are strait forward. And then S starts marching forward, pushing J along.

As they march forward, L steps in. She says she is also pulled into the constellation. This i have never experienced in all cases when i was representant. The colonne is marching strait at her. S tries to march on, pushing J along, but L blocks them when S tries to squeeze J and her against the wall. The march is coming to an end. S marches on with his feet but he does not push any more. And then L goes and sits at J´s feet, with her back against the other two. J holds her hands.

Suddenly S starts marching backwards. His arms squeeze J who is pulled backwards with him. As S and J move back, L is pulled with them. She is literally dragged over the floor as the march continues. Marije asks me if i recognize this. I am deeply moved by the sight of it all. I point at J and shout hysterically "You see? I am stuck!"

The constellation goes on, other people are invited in. But this is what its all about. I dont know what it means, but i feel deep truth in what i just saw.

PG: the invitation

2003-03-16T20:19:00.000+01:00

Dear Marije,

I decided to accept your invitation to have a look into my family system.
I would like to participate in the constellations event of april 4+5, 2003.

The point is, i have been very ill for more than a week now, and i notice how in difficult situations like these, the desire for death supports me like a friend, full of understanding and with respect.

I would like to know more about my friend.
Best regards, Ron

PG: the cleanup

2003-03-13T09:00:00.000+01:00

I'm lying in my bed for several days. I cannot eat, i cannot move. Even when i try to turn my body it hurts like a dog. It feels like all my cells are dying, one by one and all at once. I think i'm dying.

PG: the Avatar course 2002

2002-08-03T09:00:00.000+02:00

I'm on this AVATAR course. Avatar is about belief management. The Avatar master wants to know why i have come here. I tell him my story. All my life i have been waiting. I don't know why i'm waiting or whom i'm waiting for. But it definitely affects my life and i want to get it out of my system.

During the course, i have a vision. I'm lying in a room. It's totally dark around me. With my hands i can feel the ceiling above me. This is weird. I hear voices coming from above, footsteps of people. Suddenly i realize i'm in a child's grave. I try to shout 'let me out, i'm not dead'. But the people don't understand where the sound comes from, and they leave.

By the end of the course i find the answer to my question. This is not my life. I'm a placeholder, waiting for another person to show up and retake what is rightfull his.

PoD: thoughtstorm results

2000-10-01T23:35:00.000+02:00

PAUL HEERE just sent me an email with the results of a thoughtstorm on the essential properties of Pay-on-Demand (PoD).

The number of plus (+) and minus (-) shows howmuch response there was on the items mentioned. [Response means non-verbal (dis-)approvement e.g. nodding etc)

1. +++ PoD stimulates entrepreneurship (example. go to the neighbours and clean their toilet)
2. ++ Utilizes the internet principle of marketplace for request and offer
3. ++ Liberal system
4. -/+ It is a streaming, continuous process
5. + It offers chances to develop talents
6. ++ Payment is ensured, non-payers do not exist anymore
7. Your value is measured by your actions
8. +++ Elderly can make themselves usefull
9. ++ No more difference between work/non work/out-of-tax-sight work
10. ++ No more buffer needed for later (like pension - money u get when reaching age of 65)
11. + Streams create streams
12. + Networking becomes important
13. +++ Commitment to community, it is certain that it will come back
14. ++ PoD is opponent of the coolness that the internet offers --> human contact
15. +/- Funny that a product can stream, but also pay (compare cellphone)
16. +/- From A to B can also be from A to D, from C to B
17. There is more social interaction. In current society goes: in the process of buying you create distance.
18. + People are more likely to get together, see LETS communities on the internet
19. Give and take are getting closer together
20. Give and take are replaced by exchange
21. It is fluent energy, the initiative may very well come from the one that offers
22.++ PoD is a good system for enhancement of the integration of foreigners, a lot of them are used to a culture of negotiation
23. ++ It is borderless, universal
24. +/- That is why the internet is such a success

During the preparations following was observed:
- PoD could work as a love relationship, in which an invisible balance exists between give and take. One does expect something back, but it is not calculated.
- How long can anyone get without repentance?
- PoD could be a society where money no longer exists. Instead, wealth is used; people get what they should have and give what they should give. Because of wealth there is space.