Speaker 0 00:00:03 Welcome to the doctor's week show where I show you how bad states of mind, difficult life issues, aren't pathological, but rather signs of personal growth trying to happen. All right, let's get into it. Greetings people. How are you? I hope life is treating you well. And if not, we need to have a talk with it. Get it to
Speaker 1 00:00:37 Reveal the reason for giving you all these trucks. I'm sitting here drinking some tea and thinking deeply about how we deal with our life issues. The notion that our problems are meaningless, evil things, and need to be eliminated as fast as possible is as old as humanity. But this viewpoint overlooks the fact that problems contain meaningful information. That's trying to point you in the right direction for your growth to tap into this information, you have to amplify and process your symptoms. Not just try to vanquish them, amplifying them, converts them from vague amorphous experiences into clear conscious content. So while everyone else is showing you how to get rid of your problem, I'm going to show you how to make it worse temporarily therapeutically, so that you can experience true transformation and growth, not just suppression or trying to cover over your problem with some kind of fancy state of mind in episode 42, exercise 16, how to amplify a problem to discover its message.
Speaker 1 00:02:01 We amplified how your problem feels translated the feeling into a picture, express the picture and feeling in movement and unfolded your experience in a way that helps you discover the meaning and message in your problem. The notion of amplifying a problem, instead of trying to suppress or eliminate it is a radical idea. Our entire worldview revolves around the goal of conquering pain and problems. Amplifying them sounds insane, but it's not. It's the most effective way to understand and change your problem. The way we know life is through its information content and how that content is communicated to us through signals. For example, if you're not sight impaired, the way know the light goes on. When you flip the switch is that light waves hit the retinas in your eyes, which sends signals to your brain, telling you there's light. If you're not hearing impaired, you know, you hear something when sound waves hit your ears and signal your brain that you're hearing sound.
Speaker 1 00:03:18 These are examples of the perception of explicit information. Unless you have some sort of extreme process going on. You don't debate whether you're seeing the light turn on or hearing a car go by, but there's an enormous amount of information in the universe. That's implicit, meaning we don't, it it's there, but we don't know it. This is where science comes in. It observes the natural world and seeks to amplify this hidden information to the point where we can perceive it. So for example, we perceive lightning by seeing it in the sky, but we didn't know what it actually was, what its makeup and inner workings consist of until we studied it, using the scientific method to find out more information. A problem is like a faraway star. We experience its affects, meaning we feel the problem. We see the light emanating from the star, but without amplifying the signals, we don't perceive all the information that's present.
Speaker 1 00:04:31 We don't know the inner workings of the problem or the star to amplify something. You have to either exaggerate the signal, amplify your ability to pick up the signal or both to study stars. We use powerful telescopes that amplify our visual power Presto. We gather all sorts of mindblowing data about the makeup of the star, its distance from the earth, its birth and death and its implications for the age of the universe. Suddenly a little light in the sky reveals its whole story. It's the same with a problem, but because problems cause pain, humans decided at some point that there's no valuable information in them and the goal should be purely to eliminate them. It's sort of a superstition that says if it feels bad, it is bad. Even traditional psychotherapy that delves into your personal history tends to do so for the purpose of getting rid of your symptoms.
Speaker 1 00:05:39 So you can return to your familiar, your status quo, this very, very little understanding of the inner workings of your problem as a catalyst for growth and expansion, because it's viewed like a bacteria or a virus to eliminate instead of a meaningful and purposeful process to facilitate this leaves practitioners with very few practical tools for transforming painful experiences like anxiety and depression, they might help you change how you think about things. Or if they're into alternative methods, they may show you various calming techniques like breath, work, meditation, positive affirmations and so on. But the aim is the same to get rid of the bad feeling instead of using it to evolve past your familiar self and status quo problems are future oriented. Even if they have roots in the past, it's like psychiatric medication without the pills, the goal is to zap away the distress and feel normal.
Speaker 1 00:06:50 Again, it would be like taking the faraway star at face value. And assuming what you see is what you get in personal growth circles. There is an idea that problems can make you stronger, which is true, but that's still the old cause and effect model. It just says you can change how you react to a problem. It doesn't see any indogenous or intrinsic value in the problem. The idea is that something random caused your issue. And if you choose to, you can get stronger and fight the effects or even the cause. But that's a far cry from the notion that a problem is an inherently meaningful process it's designed to make you grow from the get-go. In other words, a problem. Isn't something that just accidentally causes upheaval in your life that you can grow from. It is your growth. It's your process, which could mean getting stronger, but could also mean a million other things. Hmm. I think I got up further unpack this issue of cause and effect versus process, but I need to gather my thoughts. I'm going to go bang on the drums for a minute and I'll be back. See in a second.
Speaker 1 00:08:53 Okay. I think I got, sometimes I have to go for a walk or bang on something or hit the strings on the guitar or something. And my brain kicks in the universe, which includes us functions. According to two basic laws. First is the law of cause and effect. One thing happens that causes the next thing to happen. Simple enough, the Earth's gravity causes a physical effect that keeps us glued to the ground, bad bacteria, causing the effect of making us sick and antibiotics. Get rid of the effect by axing the cause, which is the bacteria people approach problems by either trying to get rid of the effect or the cause. This way of thinking is as old as humanity and was studied extensively by the ancient Greeks. Second, the universe functions, according to the law of teleology, which also comes from the Greeks. Teleology means that whatever's happening.
Speaker 1 00:10:07 Doesn't only have a, cause it also has a purpose that guides it toward a future goal. For example, we all do things in the present because of something in the future, nothing in the past or present causes us to make plans. It's our projected perception of the future that does it's like the future is causing us to do something in the present. In fact, another term for teleology is final cause which is like saying future. Cause it's the purpose or aim of an action. The end toward which something naturally develops. Things are happening now and they're aiming somewhere, but this isn't something that just happens in our psychologies. It's a feature of nature. In general, for example, there are a million cause and effect steps in the development of a fetus, but the genetic mapping of this process is structured with an end result in mind, a purpose, a future goal.
Speaker 1 00:11:15 It strives toward namely to become a human being. An acorn goes through a bunch of cause and effect mechanisms in its development. But implicit in its genetic programming is the future goal of becoming an Oak tree. Everything in nature has a purpose of function, a goal that's driving it in biology. This means solving survival problems. For example, some animals develop camouflage for tricking their predators like how the green color of a caterpillar makes them blend into the foliage. The heart is designed like a pump for the purpose of circulating blood and check this out B, do an eight figure movement, the waggle dance. It's true. It's for the purpose of telling their comrades where there's food and places to build new nests. Now, knowing the cause and effect mechanisms that led Caterpillar's to being green and hearts pumping blood and bees dancing explains how these features get passed down from one generation to the next.
Speaker 1 00:12:31 But it doesn't explain why they actually work something other than cause and effect carries them through the filters of natural selection over eons of time. Something that connects past present and future from the get-go. Oops, that may not make any sense to you if you're not an evolution buff. Forget it. What I'm saying is that cause and effect only tells us certain things about nature. If you want to understand the whole picture, you have to talk about goals and purposes to the exercise in episode 42 on amplifying your problem shows that problems have a purpose, a goal in the future that we can't see yet. People often think about their past and say, oh, now I see why that happened to me. It's 2020 hindsight. They're not just assigning a meaning to something in the past. Things actually occur with an aim in mind. You can actually find out why things are happening in real time.
Speaker 1 00:13:42 That's why teleology is important in psychology. It asks why what's the purpose? What's the meaning? The goal, not just what's the cause in the physical sciences, it asks what's the purpose function and aim of the processes and chemical, biological and physical changes, not just what causes and effects are present. Now, this way of thinking got pushed out of the picture for about 300 years, between 1600 and 1900. This is when the first scientific revolution happened where cause and effect became king. The only places, teleological ideas that survived during that time, we're in religion where people said God's purpose is behind what happens and still do. And in some ways in biology, then everything shifted again in the early 20th century, when physics went through a second revolution with quantum theory and relativity, these fields brought process and purpose back to center stage. But change in science is hard.
Speaker 1 00:14:59 These kinds of revolutions only happen once in a while. And during the long periods between revolutions folks just toe the party line by repeating the same stuff religiously like this is the new way and nothing's ever going to change it. The revolution becomes dogma. Some people hold on to the old dogma, even after a new revolution happens. So even though modern physics and the new science textbooks include Tilly logical explanations, some scientists today are uncomfortable with it to them. Science is still based only on cause and effect because that's how it's been for three centuries. But there's a reason teleology returned understanding causes and effects. Doesn't explain a lot of things that teleology does, especially in physics and psychology. The purpose of amplifying your problems is to uncover the hidden information within them. In order to connect with your process, connecting with it is like discovering what lightning or a star are actually made of versus your superficial experience of them.
Speaker 1 00:16:19 What begins as an inexplicable pain in your life unfolds into a meaningful process that expands your consciousness and identity by directing you to make specific changes in your mindset, attitude way of relating to yourself and others and whole way of being it's totally different from just getting rid of what's bothering you and returning to who you were before you had the problem. Your problem is your process and your process is your personal evolution. What matters. This is up your life is meant to change. You make you grow into a new person, a more conscious and whole person. Your problems are your guides in your unfolding story. So instead of seeking to just get rid of what bothers you use its own information and guidance to not only transform it, but your life as well.
Speaker 1 00:17:20 Speaking of amplifying signals and using them to guide you to a new awareness. That's what guitar well fires do. Okay. Maybe the no guide you to a new awareness. No wait. They do. I listened to a guitar through an awesome app and it changes your state of mind. It may not enlighten you, but it could. Anyway. It's fascinating how amplification changes an instrument via guitar and the electric guitar are essentially the same thing, but they're not there. The guitars and the fret boards are the same, but they don't sound at all alike and you don't play them the same way. They require totally different approaches to how you touch the strings and what you listen to. But why shouldn't electrified guitar just be louder, same sound but louder. Nope. And here's why, again, information it's the same as when you amplify your problem. You boost weak unprocessed signals that carry data.
Speaker 1 00:18:34 You didn't know there. A musical note has all sorts of other harmonic frequencies associated with it, but you don't hear them without amplifying occasion. In addition, well, the fire's allow you to actually add to those frequencies. So you get a double whammy effect. You reveal sounds that you couldn't hear before, and then you can alter those sounds at will. Like you start out with a mellow, sounding, a chord, amplify it with distortion. And suddenly it's a powerful monster breathing, fire harmonics information that was already present, but not yet accessible. Similarly, when you amplify a problem, you reveal information you didn't know was there and it changes you. Then you can also play with that information, add to it, create with it, make it a part of your consciousness and identity and further evolve. It say you feel depressed, weak, worthless, and hopeless. It feels like an oppressive, heavy weight.
Speaker 1 00:19:45 Crushing the life out of you. This is analogous to seeing a far away star without knowing its inner workings. You experience its effects light in the case of the star and feeling oppressed in the case of your problem, then you amplify the heavyweight. For example, by imagining yourself as a powerful oppressive force that could crush the life out of someone and you explore the experience as the force, you feel powerful, weighty strong in charge, and you discover this energy and attitude as the missing piece in your usual identity and experience of yourself, not its negative attributes, just the power itself. Then you unraveled the story of what prevents you from identifying with your own power in a positive way. What forces you to identify with feeling and victimized? All this information was present in your depression, but was unknown before you amplified it. Processing your problems is like plugging them into a hundred watt guitar amp and blasting out the obscured information.
Speaker 1 00:21:06 Boom, your consciousness gets to experience dad, which previously lived in the shadows of your psyche. Now you have more choice, more options and feel connected to your deeper, more authentic self. When you amplify, instead of reduce your symptoms and problems, you discover new awareness, new parts of yourself, new realities, new worlds of perception. There are many worlds within you and there are many worlds within the world. Even though we share so many common life experiences where each utterly unique characters with our own processes to follow, we live together in the world, but we also live in our own realities. In quantum physics. One of the main theories is called the many worlds paradigm. It's based on the idea that there are many different ways of observing and measuring physical reality to choose from in our psyches. This translates to many different ways of perceiving ourselves in life, which in turn creates many possible ways of being.
Speaker 1 00:22:22 We can identify with the way you perceive and interpret things becomes who you are in that moment. When you consciously or unconsciously select out of the many possibilities, you collapse all the other potential ones, but where do they go? In quantum physics, they're said to go into parallel universes that exist simultaneously with this universe, but are inaccessible in our psychologies. These other realities go into our subconscious, but they are accessible amplifying problems and symptoms brings them out of the subconscious into conscious reality. One of the most important and fundamental aspects of self-awareness is knowing that in every moment there are many different directions and realities within you. By identifying with certain ones, you marginalize other ones and these marginalized parts of yourself, hold the keys to your change, growth and healing. In fact, this is the definition of a problem. Namely the expression of a marginalized part of yourself before consciously connecting with it. It manifests as an oppressive force. After integrating its information, it becomes your liberation, your enlightenment, it's all about processing your many worlds. See you next time. Stay aware.
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