META-PROGRAMMING
Discovering the Higher Self
by Peter Shepherd
CONTENTS
What is Meta-Programming?
Meta-Programming is a set of analytical procedures which you apply to yourself, with the aid of biofeedback monitoring, in order to differentiate the spiritual part of your being - the Higher Self - from the mental and physical. From the viewpoint of the Higher Self it becomes possible to rise above the programming imprinted by the experiences and cultural conditioning of your current lifetime and beyond. This is the process of "meta-programming": to go beyond or transcend programming.You work at your own pace through a cleverly researched gradient of development. The well-proven techniques are designed to resolve the conundrums, dilemmas and dichotomies that arise from being essentially spiritual and immortal, but living within a survival-driven body and environment. It is a life-enhancing approach, and holistic in that it is about integrating your spiritual life with all of your everyday activities and goals - in the here-and-now.
The program of advanced self-analysis may begin when the student has achieved adequate objectivity of his or her mental processes to be able to work alone in this way. For some people, completion of the Explorations given in the text "Transforming the Mind" will be adequate preparation; others will need further work, such as the correspondence course, "The New Life Course" - this will be discussed upon application. The Meta-Programming course is itself a preparation for advanced work applying the Meta-Programming techniques on The Insight Project.
The use of a GSR (galvanic skin response) Biofeedback Monitoring device facilitates the necessary element of neutral objectivity.
The factors that prevent awareness of the Higher Self (the non-physical essence of being) are dealt with in great depth, inspected much more thoroughly and incisively than any previous spiritual or meditative method has made possible, such that the results from this work, properly done, will cause an everlasting freedom of viewpoint. The procedures of Meta-Programming are tools with which progress on the spiritual path may always be supported.
INSIGHT:
- The ability to perceive and understand the true nature of something.
- Knowledge obtained by this. [Oxford Senior Dictionary]
Meta-Programming is based on emancipation through the direct experience of knowledge, i.e. through insight. The knowledge that sincere application of the procedures contained in Meta-Programming will bring you, is all that is necessary for you to experience your own truth, your immortal identity, freedom from limitation, and genuine happiness.
But surely, you may say, we are in the midst of a "knowledge explosion" today. But this has not eliminated war, fear, poverty, anxiety or Man's daily inhumanity to man. Nor has it given man any legitimate knowledge of his make-up. It has only been "knowing about", not knowledge acquired from direct experience, from looking within.
Thus it is that man drifts aimlessly through a world seemingly without meaning or purpose - a world he created but over which he no longer exercises conscious control or power. Man today has lost his identity and his purpose for existing. He has lost his sense of the Game of Life. He is an unknowing and unwilling game-player. Never before has man been so much of a problem to himself.
Why does man, with all his intelligence, allow this situation to exist? Is there a practical answer?
Man does not know himself. The task now before you is to begin to know yourself. To possess self-knowledge you must first become free of illusions about yourself, the people around you, and the Universe. Until you begin to understand your illusions you will never be free to see the truth about yourself or anything else. That is, as intuitive knowingness, not "knowing about".
Illusions consist of all sorts of mistaken ideas you hold about yourself, false assumptions as to your abilities, erroneous concepts about your place and purpose in the world, and so forth. It is difficult to break-up these illusions because they have become deeply engrained habit patterns. To be able to change, which is the only way to gain self-knowledge and freedom, you must do things you have never done before, and recognise that viewpoints that you were determined must be right, may possibly be wrong.
As Ouspensky says, "The greatest barrier to consciousness is the belief that one is already conscious." Just considering the matter, one for an instant wakes-up, then returns to slumber in the illusion that, yes, he is conscious. The truth of the matter is that 99% of the time, man is behaving mechanically - he is determined by external influences.
Nearly all of Man's thoughts, ideas, emotions, aspirations, words and moods are triggered by external influences. These trigger him automatically according to his previous conditioning, upbringing, education and experiences, and his innate human nature, instincts and drives. Creative work, the application of free will, is only possible if vision is unhindered by pre-conceived fixed ideas or reverence to singular ideologies.
The mind, while operating subjectively as one mind, can be differentiated into several level of function:
- Higher consciousness. This non-physical mind is the knowing of the Being: the Higher Self. It is non-verbal and therefore can only communicate to the other functions of mind through intuitive channels. This is direct, fully awakened perception and insight. It is an abstract quality, not a quantity; it is implicit, not explicit. It functions increasingly as the "ego-defences" (protection of the self-image) of the conscious and subconscious mind are broken down. This mind of the spiritual essence of Being consists of the Being's considerations, postulates, opinions, evaluations, purposes, intentions and goals. It is the essence that is aware of being aware. It is free choice and creativity, what makes Man rise above the animal, the essence of life, love and truth.
- Intuitive. This is a higher level of awareness that is non-verbal. It relates diverse sources of information to create a holistic picture. It functions through the right cortical hemisphere of the brain as its intermediary with the left hemisphere "ego" and the body. ESP is the "release" of intuition into your conscious experience.
- Conscious. This is the level of awareness of Man in our left-brain oriented culture when he is not functioning automatically. It is verbalised thinking, reasoning and analysis. It is "knowing about". It is sequential and time-based. It uses the left cortical hemisphere of the brain as its intermediary with the body. It gives a sense of "ego" personality or self-identity, though this is transitory and shifts constantly and unknowingly through many ego-states or sub-personalities in response to changes of circumstances.
- Pre-conscious. This contains all the things you know about and can recall but aren't examining at this moment. It is like the area of mind that the searchlight of consciousness can readily illuminate.
- Subconscious. This level of mind contains decisions that have been made consciously at one time and which later became forgotten, though they are still active and effective. Also it contains the memories that at one time were experienced but which the conscious ego wants well out of the way of the pre-conscious, i.e. they are suppressed, though they frequently emerge in dreams. The subconscious functions beneath the surface, and the decisions which accompany suppressed memories act as programming and are dramatised unknowingly, through a reactive stimulus-response mechanism. Thus the mind becomes conditioned. Subconscious decisions are a left-brain function and subconcious emotional content is a right-brain function. The harmful split between left and right brain is a result of the conscious ego defending itself against painful memories and painful reality by the act of suppression, and the construction of rationalising beliefs and fixed ideas. It is necessary to break down these barriers and re-integrate the brain, so that the intuitive function of insight is possible. This is achieved by the method of analysis used on Meta-Programming.
- Unconscious. The unconscious mind is never brought into consciousness. It contains the most basic programming, the innate genetic blueprint of the human organism - the survival, sexual and aggressive drives and instincts, and the "body knowledge" of sensory and motor skills, innate and acquired. It automatically performs the millions of simultaneous directives that are essential for the human being to function. It also contains the "unexperienced experience" of traumatic incidents that caused unconsciousness or were unconfrontable and repressed at the time, and therefore were never absorbed into the database of the conscious mind. Nevertheless they are stored in every detail at this level of mind, and their contents continue to have an effect on the person in a stimulus-response manner.
Thus Meta-Programming seeks to re-orient your basic unconscious concepts by changing your normal reactions and responses to life's everyday occurrences, in the light of insight by the higher consciousness, intuitively perceived.
Finding the Inner Self
All spiritual roads lead to that uncomfortable destination where the examination and acceptance of the inner self must take place. The first step is to realise our judgements and fears are self-created and limit our scope to deal with the present. They are the surface manifestations that capture our attention and keep us from focusing on the real blocks, deep in our psyche - the unconscious patterns.So well have they been hidden, covered by justifications and illusory beliefs, that few have had the strength to break through them. They are the backbone of duality - the rigid "black and white" thinking that makes understanding of holistic truth impossible. But we are oblivious to this situation because we have protective shields - we hold on to the past or hide in the future. We have consuming interests, worries about our status or our possessions. Such shields are both a great help and a great hindrance to us. They pacify us and at the same time fool us, giving us a false sense of security.
Wholeness, or being totally in the present, is dependant on breaking the patterns, of erasing their duality; only then can new states of consciousness become possible. It's been known since ancient times in Eastern religions and philosophies and among some Western mystics, that one's resistance to the events and forces of life lead to one's imprisonment in a smaller viewpoint, an isolation from perception, participation and enjoyment of life.
It's only when a Being considers that he can't safely experience something, that he puts force out to stop it. That wouldn't be so bad, but as time goes by, he forgets what exactly he was trying to avoid and begins to generalise it. Eventually this resistance is occurring on an undifferentiated basis, and his intentions form blocks against much of the life and flows of energy of others around him. He has locked himself into a cocoon of his own making.
The procedures of Meta-Programming, layer by layer, strip away the cocoon, leaving the Being in a sense quite naked, ridgeless and free. Those who have experienced these techniques talk of feeling reborn, that their life is starting anew, or that it is really starting for the first time. It removes the reasons why a Being restrains himself, releasing the energy and purposes to participate in all of life causatively - with CHOICE regained.
The Approach of Meta-Programming
There is a difference between a viewpoint and an identity as we define them. A viewpoint is simply a point from which one perceives. A Being, in order to operate in this universe, needs to assume a viewpoint. He can then receive inflow and create outflow.An identity contains a viewpoint, but it is more than that. An identity is a way one decides to be in order to deal with a situation or in order to manifest an intention. So it contains a viewpoint, but it's also an intention to accomplish something, with accompanying decisions, beliefs, considerations, evaluations and agreements. It's a package of rules and laws passed by the person of how to be in given circumstances.
Everyone has many such identities, necessary to participate in life. The ones that we give attention to on Meta-Programming are ones the person gets stuck in - that are imprinted on his or her personality.
There are as many other fixed identifications as there are personality-types and the different masks people put on for all the varying social situations of their life. And there are very many more subtle ones relating to a person's complex belief-system, the affects of personal trauma, sympathies and misdeeds plus the myriad affects of cultural conditioning (shoulds and shouldn'ts necessary to be acceptable to parents, teachers, employers, friends, lovers and society).
All of these identities have an accompanying intention - what the person wanted to achieve by that behaviour. If he has formulated an intention and has not achieved or unmade it, then he is still in the middle of that action cycle and that cycle remains part of his perceived here and now, taking up his attention, i.e. his energy and power. He is, to that extent, "not all there" in present time. This tends to happen with an identification that the person is not conscious of, because it is such a familiar part of his life or because it is painful or uncomfortable to view and awareness of it is avoided - it becomes unconscious.
Most people have many frustrated intentions that are emotionally charged in this way, and are very adept at justifying and rationalising any manifestations of these "sub-personalities" so they are not recognised.
Meta-Programming has many cunning techniques to awaken the Being, so that these debilitating trapped viewpoints can be freed, and the Being can come more and more into the HERE AND NOW, realising the incredible resources that each one of us intrinsically possess. Previously perceived limitations dissolve away and new horizons appear. Life goals that seemed impossible then become an exciting new challenge.
The eternal question "Who am I?" is finally answered by turning the scientific method in on oneself to objectively determine one's true nature. With the tools of Meta-Programming one looks at the goals, identities, roles and ways of being that are being assumed. Right now, not in the past. Usually these are being dramatised unknowingly, rather than by conscious decision, and therefore no responsibility is taken for the identification. The reasons why one is compulsively playing a role, and therefore behaving reactively and unconsciously, have not been confronted. A network of rationalisations have been put in place to avoid having to make this confront. It is a network of safe solutions to the trials and tribulations of life. It is also the destroyer of awareness, and the preventer of insight.
Meta-Programming examines the area of mental functioning which causes these survival computations to stick together, to form barrier against that which cannot be truly perceived. At a subconscious level, the responsibility that perceiving the truth would demand, is considered too much to take on.
The techniques taught on Meta-Programming take down this barrier by questioning - with the aid of the Biofeedback Monitor - the validity or closeness to the objective truth, of one's every mental consideration.
The Being - YOU - knows, which is why the Biofeedback Monitor can work, but the mind hides this knowingness behind a fog of confusions, fixed ideas and "rightnesses". All of them are safe solutions that are being grasped onto, despite the fact that many of them conflict.
As one strips these away, gradually increasing one's awareness, responsibility and ability to face up to reality, new and previously unseen layers of rationalisation and self-deceit become available to inspect. The view constantly changes and opens up, until finally, in the particular area that is being inspected, the truth is seen, and the breakthrough to insight obtained.
The technical procedures of Meta-Programming involve examining the current viewpoint of the Being. This present time pole is what the past is hooked onto. There is a finite amount of current mental functioning but an infinity of past experiences that would take forever to resolve. By taking down the present time pole, the mass of the past falls away.
One is always looking for truth - something you didn't realise before - although at a deep level you already know it. But one's view is always conditional upon the degree of awareness, responsibility and confront you are adopting, for survival purposes or for purpose of game (the need to have challenges, interest, excitement). The way you see something is always conditional in this way, like coloured glasses through which you view past, present and future - unless the subject has been released of all charged conflict.
Normal, human, perceptions are - as a rule - reactive or "stimulus-response", the result of the conditioning of a lifetime and even of previous lifetimes. Psychotic perceptions are, of course crazy; neurotic perceptions are illogical; but even normal human perceptions are still determined by others and far below the knowingness of a fully realised Being.
Realising that what one had previously thought or decided was actually inappropriate, exaggerated, inaccurate, self-defeating or a false assumption will cause a release of charge - i.e. the emotional energy that had been bound up by frustration. But on Meta-Programming one goes beyond that, digging up the lies, misconceptions and misownership of concepts or viewpoints - the source of the irrationality - to get to the actual truth of the matter, your OWN viewpoint, and this gives not just a release but a permanent erasure of charge. Then it's really handled for good, and you won't be re-creating problematic feelings as soon as the session ends, or troubled times re-occur.
In actuality, YOU KNOW. The Biofeedback Monitor helps to reveal your intuitive knowingness, and eventually, layer by layer, this truth is revealed, like a painting being cleaned of centuries of grime. YOU are revealed. Gradually you differentiate the Higher Self from the Composite body-mind of the human being.
The human animal is a sophisticated (highly evolved) combination of both its genes and the body-mind conditioned from conception by traumatic stimuli and parental and cultural influence. From this programming the personality-mask or "ego" develops, and this is multi-faceted, as different masks and different egos come into play in all the many and varying circumstances of life. The Being identifies with these multiple sub-personalities and the archetypal drives and survival instincts this earthly vehicle dramatises.
Thus forms the Composite. However, the Composite is in conflict. The Being is not, essentially, of this world, and has no innate concerns with survival - he is interested in Game (involvements in scenarios which provide the opportunity for him to exercise creativity and have fun) and his considerations concern that. The human, genetic entity is primarily concerned with survival. What results is a mass of safe solutions to this conundrum.
When energy flows meet from opposite directions they impact and form massy blocks. Similarly, the conflict of intentions within the Composite being, form the mass of the Composite mental structure, and this mass of intention-counter-intention effectively acts as an "Imprint" or imposition upon the Being. It is the "unconfrontable" charge that causes the being to shut down drastically his awareness and responsibility for causation, to be "asleep" while the conditioning takes control. It is a primary purpose of Meta-Programming to erase this Imprint.
The Imprint is the blockage which results from the spiritual and material intentions being identified as one, although they conflict in basic purpose. Subjectively it is the mass one feels which restricts one's awareness and limits one's space. It is the barriers, the impacted energy flows, the "ridges" between oneself and others, that make one feel alone and unconnected.The spiritual or non-physical element is trying to play games, but they have become unknowing (like actually becoming a piece on the chess board) and hence trap him. The physical element is programmed through evolution to survive, again without choice.
The Higher Self is not of this world, but adopts a viewpoint within it. Adopting a human body, its mind operates through the "via" of the human brain, to control the body and to perceive through the body. The behavioural instincts of the human are contained in the primitive "reptilian" brain, but this of course interacts with the highly evolved human cortex of the brain, the seat of "thinking consciousness".
The left half of the cortex works with verbal, sequential and analytical processes, while the right side deals with intuitive, emotional and synthesising processes. Both may be aberrated. The left may adopt misconceptions, defensive rationalisations and survival computations - the fixed ideas of belief systems, which attach to the various assumed identities or ways of being. These are stimulated (usually unknowingly) by life circumstances.
In the right brain, aberration takes the form of suppressed feelings, emotions, attitudes, pains and experience - truth that is withheld. The Being communicates through the intuitive non-verbal right side (via a crystallised link from the pineal gland) and if right-brain awareness is detached from the left-brain conscious ego, the Being may become detached from mental consciousness - asleep behind a smoke screen of words.
Insights and practical ideas are useless if just "known about" - they are for everyone that can act, to test out empirically for themselves. All belief systems are just another potential trap and all the ideas described within the Project materials will either be discovered or not on your own venture into self-knowledge. The truth lies within you, no-one else can provide it for you. Meta-Programming procedure completely eschews any type of evaluation - where you look and what you find are up to you, the course simply provides you with a set of powerful tools.
A Paradigm Shift
Just in the last few years there has been the start of a paradigm shift, or a new way of looking at things, in the area of science, metaphysics, information systems, psychology, medicine and ecology. These and many other subjects have become integrated by advanced thinkers (who recognised the dangers of blinkered specialisation) into an holistic world-view, where the disciplines do not just exist independently but relate inter-actively.It may be the only hope for our planet that this progress continues, since the radical new policies required for survival of this eco-system, will be ineffective if not allied with an holistic view of man, that recognises his spiritual, mental, physical and social needs and problems.
This new holistic paradigm helps to connect many data of comparable magnitude from different fields of knowledge. Perhaps the most inspiring is the link between the new physics of quantum mechanics and the mystical study of metaphysics. The mathematics of quantum theory postulates a zero-point, a "static" outside of space-time. Further, changes to one particle may also incur simultaneous changes to other particles in that field - a synchronous communication of information which is outside of Einstein's laws of space-time.
This is an "information field", i.e. information itself has existence independent of space and time. For example, if Beethoven's 9th Symphony had only existed within the composer's mind, would it "exist" any less than it does today, on manuscripts and records around the world?
It may be said that this "creative-vacuum" is of a spiritual nature, or it is the nature of spirit. Physicist-philosopher David Bohm has postulated an extension of these principles from the micro-cosmic to the macro-cosmic, to explain the metaphysical causation by consciousness of matter, energy, space and time, in terms of physics. The results closely match both the findings of Eastern philosophers and the hypotheses of Meta-Programming, so that the mystery of universal consciousness is now brought into the objective sphere, causing endless potential for further advancement of our understanding and for the humanisation of science.
There is a point in applied metaphysics, however, where personal experience of consciousness is essential to progress further, and where only a profound change in consciousness can effectively prove the hypothesis, that man is part of the spiritual causation of the material universe and that his considerations affect the universe, both as a single Being and as part of the whole Causative Order. Science lacks a technology for such change and the mystical techniques are hit-and-miss and require a life-time or more of training.
The techniques of Meta-Programming however are proving to be a most effective method for each of us to discover our full potential. Meta-Programming works to realise and integrate the Higher Self, the true spiritual Being. We can be at rest in this awareness, like the eye of a storm. The world whirls all around, in the field of consciousness. This "I" is both an observer and a constant centre of all the activity. It is only at this centre, having dis-identified from the many controlling forces, that the person achieves freedom, to master, direct and utilise them. Being at the centre, the observer can also be seen as the experiencer, able to more fully experience inner and outer events and to become unafraid of living. The free person can move around in his personality and in the world, instead of being locked into fixed and safe patterns, and in that way can be in touch with unlimited potential for experience
The initial Meta-Programming course contains the fundamental principles and techniques of Meta-Programming. You learn to apply the Biofeedback Monitor in the context of profound personal development procedures. On a well-proven gradient you gradually become skilled in working on your own with the techniques; in addition at all times you have as much support as you require by e-mail correspondence.
The Insight Project
Having learnt the principles and application of basic Meta-Programming techniques and established a clear and stable state of being - itself in advance of states achievable by other methods - one is then well prepared to begin the advanced procedures of The Insight Project, which are presented in four Parts:Part I of the Insight Project handles all past identities (that are still being held on to right now) so that you are being your own desired identity playing your own game. It is the deprogramming of reactive identities and the beginning of release from the game of being Homo Sapiens. Part I reveals the Imprint phenomena and gets the individual Meta-Programmer aware of his or her Higher Self.
Part II exposes the environmental restimulation and the behaviour patterns the individual is stuck in, as he can now view this material objectively. It is the deprogramming of reactive compulsions and inhibitions - the needs and fears which are the barrier to full realisation. It produces a full state of clarity, much like that of the Buddhist who - over many lifetimes of meditation - has learned to no longer be a slave to his egotistical desires. But this is learning achieved much more directly, in this lifetime.
Part III uncovers the layers of decisions, evaluations and considerations that the Higher Self is acting on and which caused the Being to descend into aberrated agreements. On this Part all the material broached on Parts I and II is finalised and any loose ends resolved, so that the highest level of case is now fully accessible.
Part IV deals with the Games Beings Play and get stuck with, like the Physical Universe. The matrix of postulates of the Higher Self, on which the individual has been operating in this and other time continuums, are revealed with all their ramifications and significances, so that the Being is extraverted from all stuck (unknowing) Games.
Starting Meta-Programming
Pre-requisite for starting work on Meta-Programmingis either having made good progress with previous personal development such that you feel emotionally stable yet spontaneous and with a clear sense of spiritual identity - or - to accomplish this, completion of "The New Life Course" - a correspondence course which expands upon the practical exercises (Explorations) given in Transforming the Mind to provide an ideal preparation for Meta-Programming.The materials of the Meta-Programming course are extensive, covering 10 Levels or technical approaches. The course covers everything you need to know, from learning to do basic procedures in self-administered sessions, through to the most advanced techniques for spiritual self-realisation available in the world at this time. Each Part of the Insight Project is of similar length and so the whole project may take up to a few years to attain the end-point of Full Realisation - but it should be stressed that each individual has a unique case to resolve and so this period may be shorter or longer, and also the tools that are learnt are always applicable both through the rest of this life and beyond.
After you sign on, you download the course in the form of a PDF file which you can view in the freely available Adobe Acrobat Reader. Or you may like to print out a copy (336 printed pages).
SPECIAL OFFER! We would like to offer our students a complete development program, so when you have purchased the Meta-Programming course we will send you - FREE OF CHARGE - the New Life Course (details here). This will help you prepare for Meta-programming and also will be a valuable resource on your journey.
The price that we ask for The Insight Project Part I - 'Meta-Programming' course is US$ 797. To order on the Internet with a secure transaction by credit card, go to our ORDER PAGE. This is a secure SWREG server, which provides immediate verification of the purchase and you can order in your chosen currency. A full range of cards are accepted. Alternatively you can phone or fax your card details to SWREG. They will confirm your transaction by email and inform you of the download URL, plus they will inform Tools for Transformation of your course enrollment.
Payment may also be made directly by check payable to Peter Shepherd, sent to: Tools for Transformation, 1 rue Vimal, 63130 Royat, France. I will cover the currency exchange and clearance costs. To check how much US$ 797 is in your local currency, please use this online conversion facility.
The four further Parts of the Insight Project each cost the same as Part I, when bought separately, or you can buy a package of all five Parts for US$ 3000, saving nearly $1000. However, the further Parts do not have to cost you anything --- if you introduce a new person to the Project and they pay the fee to start on Part I, you can have your own next Part absolutely free! Or alternatively earn yourself $100 commission.
To do Meta-Programming you will need a biofeedback monitor, in particular a galvanic skin response (GSR) meter. The GSR meters that I particularly recommend are the USA-manufactured Clarity Meter ($US 795.00), and the UK-manufactured Ability Meter (GBP 534.00 = $US 760.00). These are the best meters on the market. A budget-priced alternative is the Australian-manufactured Biofeedback Meter ($US 206.50), which will do the job just fine. The Meta-Programming course includes full training in use of a meter 'solo.' In addition a complete meter course is available free online.
Students on the Project are supported by a Mailing List, to air issues, questions and experiences for the benefit of all. Plus there is unlimited personal email support from your Supervisor, Peter Shepherd.
If you feel this path may be for you, please contact Peter Shepherd, Supervisor of The Insight Project.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: If the Insight Project is a spiritual path, shouldn't it be free?A: This is the real world. Actually, my motivation in presenting the Project is not financial, it is to get the materials widely applied, for the benefit of as many individuals as possible. A product tends to be valued as much as the amount given in exchange for it. Self-help books usually sit unused on the shelf. When you've paid substantial money for Meta-Programming, you'll want to get on and do it! And it is worth a lot - you get unlimited hours of application of the techniques, as much supervision and help by email as you require, and a large number of the best available leading-edge techniques for consciousness expansion. These are tools to apply throughout your life. Also payments support further research and development of the Project for all of our future benefit.
I've priced the Parts at what I feel is an appropriate amount, although actually the benefits are priceless. Corporate training and the prices charged by cults for dubious methods are both far higher. To show that my primary motivation is more people doing the Project, I offer the following plan: when you succeed yourself on Part I and want others to benefit likewise, and so recommend the Project to friends, when a friend enrolls on Part I you get your own Part II completely free. In this way there is no need for anyone to pay for more than the first Part of the Project.
Q: I was scanning through your web site and find some similarity to the principle notions of Dianetics or what became Scientology. At least of what I know of those two areas. Is your work based on the work of L Ron Hubbard, or he yours? How are they similiar and how do they differ in brief?
A: Yes, there is some similarity. I studied Scientology in the early 70's after I left university and before I did psychology training. The subject contained many valuable principles that were not to be found in conventional psychology, though I then discovered that those principles were to be found - though expressed differently - in alternative psychology (such as Assagioli and later Transpersonal and Humanistic psychologists) and in the materials that Hubbard originally researched (such as Bauer, Korzybski, Jung, Matheson, Eric Berne and Fritz Perls, not to mention Crowley and the Kabbalah) and through study of Yoga and Tibetan Buddhism, Gurdjieff and Bennett, Sufism, and modern thinkers such as Leary and Robert Anton Wilson. This research amplified some Scientology ideas and also showed the flaws and shortcomings of others.
Like other methods of psychoanalysis, Hubbard's approach is to clear the suppressed emotional charge built-up over lifetimes (that reactively affects rational thought and feelings) by looking at past incidents and re-evaluating them more objectively so that the decisions based on them can be re-made. That is valid at the psycho-therapeutic level of case handling, though the use of a GSR meter (which Hubbard adopted from the methods of Jung, Korzybski and Matheson) considerably increases effectiveness (but can be abused when accompanied by evaluative techniques).
But when you move on to increase awareness above the normal, i.e. on to the spiritual path, that is where Scientology starts to go badly wrong. Hubbard was a paranoid schizophrenic and ego-maniac, unfortunately, as well as a very charismatic communicator. He was a profound liar and manipulator; he needed the workable Scientology ideas to get people hooked, then he evaluated a preposterous 'whole track' past life scenario of dangerous space wars and implants and many people were effectively brainwashed with all this stuff, and any gains achieved with the basic Scientology techniques are soon eradicated when the 'upper level' stuff is bought hook, line and sinker. The emphasis is on escape not understanding; "them and us" rather than brotherhood; seriousness rather than "right, wrong - who cares?" This doesn't produce enlightened beings. Love was no part of Hubbard's teachings, whereas actually love is what true spirituality is about, love on an ever expanding scale, centered less and less on the Self. Note, however, one always retains individuality, even when fully enlightened to one's connectedness to the whole, but it is an individuality that is without the barriers and separateness of unrealised understanding.
My approach to advanced development is to view what is in the present time; what you are being, doing and having (and not being, not doing, not having) right now, in thought, feeling and action. Because that is the space and time in which you are truly operating, not in the past - however much one's case is modelled and effected by past experience, it is being dramatised in the present. The present you can observe objectively. The past is a rag bag of misowned and false data, especially when evaluation is introduced as well. Take down the present pole of case and the past drops away. One is a finite action, the other is never ending. One places you at cause, loving and spontaneous; the other at effect, paranoid and having to be right. That is the fundamental difference, plus the fact that the approach I offer is informed by much wider and more up-to-date resources.
So they are similar but quite different. Scientology has some important techniques that are used in Meta-Programming, but the direction is 180 degrees away. The techniques of Meta-Programming are totally done from a present time viewpoint - what is apparent as you look at your life and considerations, beliefs, etc in the present. Anything from the past, if it is affecting you now, will also be accessible in your current mental environment - you don't have to look into the past to find it. To go looking into the past is a never-ending road of falsity and lies; practically all of the stuff 'dealt with' in Scientology upper levels proves out to be false data when examined with the techniques of Meta-Programming, techniques which Scientology does not have available.
Evaluation is completely eschewed in Meta-Programming; what you handle is your case and your case only, at your current level of awareness, responsibility and confront. Wrong evaluations about self, and invalidations, cause one to introspect and look for evidence inside oneself slanted by that false data, and this can reach psychosis. Whereas the truth comes from looking objectively.
Q: What I am really looking for is a way to tap into the real me without opening up doors that can possibly send me into some mental institution. Is this possible?
A: Meta-Programming techniques are 'light' - you never get into traumatic incidents because you stay in present time and the questions are oriented that way. It's enlightening, like meditation but more directed and effective.
Q: What about this spiritual business. Out of body, telepathy and so on. It seems to me that we are not just a being inside a skull that is trapped but rather very human also, any comments?
A: The Scientology view of this is all wrong: they confuse the spirit with the left-brain thinking self, the ego, and they think the brain does not have any real part to play. This is incredibly naive, ego-based and actually, unenlightened. The spiritual aspect of self is much more abstract, it is non-verbal and can only be accessed intuitively. One can project a remote viewpoint from the body, and telepathy happens all the time for everyone, though usually not noticed (again because it is non-verbal and right-brain accessed and we live in a left-brain culture). The brain holds our experience and behaviour patterns and we could not function as humans without it, of course. The human also comes, as with any animal, with a genetic inheritance, sexual and survival drives, and lots more. Humans are like speaking, reasoning chimps - i.e. very intelligent, with or without the 'spirit' or higher consciousness. Most-times we are asleep spiritually anyway and live our lives largely on this human level. Meta-Programming aims to transcend our animal and cultural as well as our mental and spiritual conditioning.
Q: What other approaches towards enlightenment do you recommend?
A: Doing the New Life Course, either before or in parallel with Meta-Programming, provides an 'education' that builds on the contents of Transforming the Mind with appropriate life skills, mental tools and psychic training, that help to open up access to the intuitive knowledge and creativity that is the realm of the spiritual being.
In particular I recommend the Centerpointe Research Institute program using HoloSync® technology. This is a safe yet powerful way to open up communication between the left and right brain, making access to deeply buried and suppressed material much easier, at the same time revealing the intuitive knowingness that each of us has. Some of the devices to be found at Tools for Wellness, such as the Stress Shield and the BT6 CES can also be very helpful (see the book Mega-Brain Power by Michael Hutchison).
Q: How long does Meta-Programming take?
A: Working straight through the initial Meta-Programming course and the four Parts of the Insight Project might take a few years but that isn't really the point. As you go you build up a collection of tools that can be used as appropriate at any time to handle the issues that you are dealing with right now, rather than on a preset agenda. So these are tools for life. Meta-Programming offers a structured and continuing process of profound learning - here in this life rather than through many lifetimes of trial and error.
Q: What exactly is the 'imprint phenomena'? Is it things we have taken from a source other than our own that have led to us getting stuck in this whole ball of wool in the first place?
A: Yes, it is misowned ideas, beliefs, intentions and purposes, that have been accepted and identified with as though they were one's own. They may be valid or stupid or whatever, but the point is they are not yours and they are not applied consciously, leading to bypassed charge surrounding them.
Q: Is the 'Substitute Beingness' comprised purely of this imprint phenomena?
A: It may be a directly imprinted goal (through conditioning, heavy enforcement, etc) or a goal that is yours but heavily influenced by others viewpoints or by prior imprinting/conditioning. The thing is, it's a biggie, it rules your life and awareness, and it's very heavily identified with and therefore is not visible to you. It's who you are that everyone else can see, but you're blissfully unaware that you're dramatizing this identityin every aspect of your life. Part I exposes this and Part II deals with all the things that keep it in place, your habitual actions and the patterns of restimulation by the environment.
After this the deeply suppressed true Own Goals, those of the Higher Self, become accessible and are run on Part III, along with the postulates that preceded these goals. Part IV handles the conflict structures between your spiritual postulates and Part V returns to handle the case of the other person's viewpoint in all this, so that pan-determinism is finally possible and an end point for the Project of Full Realisation of your causation is achieved.
Q: If we are just recognising things as imprinted which seems to have the effect of disentangling us from that influence, then where does all the heavy attached charge go to? Does this also need to be handled so it doesn't hang around and have the chance of coming back to us?
A: Charge is erased by finding the truth. Charge is lies, alterations, negations, anything but the truth, and those lies are held in place by imprints accepted by a particular identity. When you realise and indicate the truth, by Indicator Technique (full description here), or indicate that something is not what it seemed, the charge has no more hold and the connection drops away. This includes all the trauma and frustrations (bypassed charge) that is experienced whenever that identity is in restimulation and being dramatized.
(Further questions to be added - do you have one?)
The next chapter of Transforming the Mind is an Introduction to Meta-Programming - this is excerpted from the actual course materials, giving a detailed description of the principles on which the Meta-Programming techniques are based.
Transforming the Mind - Contents
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