One of my favorite things about life is that there is always something new and interesting to learn about. You could never exhaust the endless stream of bizarre stuff humans come up with.

Today’s interesting tidbit comes from Spirit Under Transsexual Cover where I learned about Wilhelm Reich. A Freudo-Marxist Jew, Reich fled Germany in the 1930’s after his writings were banned by the Nazi regime:

Reich agreed with Freud that sexual development was the origin of mental illness. They both believed that most psychological states were dictated by unconscious processes; that infant sexuality develops early but is repressed, and that this has important consequences for mental health. At that time a Marxist, Reich argued that the source of sexual repression was bourgeois morality and the socio-economic structures that produced it. As sexual repression was the cause of the neuroses, the best cure would be to have an active, guilt-free sex life. He argued that such a liberation could come about only through a morality not imposed by a repressive economic structure.

In his later career, Reich claimed to have discovered an energy called “orgone” which permeated the universe and was sexual in nature. He believed orgone could cure illness and built boxes called “orgone accumulators” for sick people to sit in and be healed. These boxes were rumored to cause uncontrollable erections. Reich also created a device called a “cloudbuster” which he claimed could concentrate streams of orgone in the atmosphere to make rain.

Reich’s claims of a cure for cancer led to a devoted following of patients, which caught the attention of the FDA. Eventually Reich was imprisoned and diagnosed with paranoia and delusions. He died in prison in 1957.

Despite this colorful history, Reichian therapies are still in use today. From what I can find, Reichian breathwork or energetics is a holistic approach to physical and emotional well being. One of the central ideas of Reichian therapy is “armoring“:

Unpleasant events in our lives trigger the well known “fight or flight” reflex. Repeated exposure to such trauma physically hardens the victim to the pain. Reich termed this phenomenon “armoring”. Armoring is often demonstrated in a tightened jaw, a stiff neck and shallow breathing caused by a tight chest. It can also be seen in other segments of the body.

(This idea reminds me of my own pet metaphor for human growth and suffering.)

Reichian therapy endeavors to reverse the physical and emotional effects of armoring through psychotherapy, breathwork and physical manipulations. It’s all very fascinating. I’m always interested in people who are both brilliant and slightly insane. The two seem to go together often.

Here are more resources on Reichian Therapy:

Reichian Energetics

The Orgonomic Institute of Northern California

The Bernstein Institute

If you’ve undergone Reichian therapy, please share your experience with us.

In researching JFK and Ken Wilber, I came across the Andrew Cohen question. Andrew Cohen is an controversial American spiritual leader who is often connected with Ken Wilber. I’m not the only one who has been concerned about Wilber’s endorsement of a potentially very shady character.

Here is a blog post from Integral Options Cafe on this very topic. The author’s concerns are very similar to my own:

It really hurts Wilber’s image to be associated with such a person as Cohen. It makes anyone who thinks about it skeptical of Wilber’s ability to distinguish good teachers from bad. And failing that, it makes one wonder — assuming KW knows Cohen is awful — if he is only associated with Cohen for the exposure he gets for himself and I-I in WIE?

Personally, I think Ken Wilber has more than enough exposure, but I do wonder why he would recommend a teacher like Cohen. Here is another criticism of Cohen and still another on the Wilber/Cohen connection.

So what is the big deal? There is a lot of documentation on Andrew Cohen’s questionable practices. From books by former students, to online chronicles of his shortcomings, even Cohen’s mother joins in the criticism. But maybe it all comes to down different strokes for different folks?

I checked out the foreward Ken Wilber wrote for Cohen’s book Living Enlightenment. Wilber is very upfront about Cohen being a “Rude Boy” who will shake you out of your complacency:

I have often heard Nice-Guy teachers say that Andrew Cohen is rude, and I think, “You don’t know the half of it.” I have often heard it said that Andrew is difficult, offending, edgy, and I think, “Thank God.” In fact, virtually every criticism I have ever heard of Andrew is a variation on, “He’s very rude, don’t you think?” And I smile the biggest smile you can imagine. If it weren’t for the Rude Boys and Nasty Girls of God Realization, Spirit would be a rare visitor in this strange land.

In fact, “rude” was the first word I used to describe Cohen when I told Laura about the video of him I watched last night. As you can see, he is not particularly articulate or gracious during the presentation, however, I really liked what he had to say. He explained my own frustrations with Buddhism better than I ever could.

This Andrew Cohen business (and criticism of Ken Wilber in general) is of particular interest to me as I applied to grad school in Integral Psychology. I will keep you updated on my findings, but I highly recommend watching the video here as a quick intro to Andrew Cohen. You can also find his official website here.

I love this post from Steve Olson: Do American Suburbs Breed Fear?

I especially liked his conclusion:

More suburban parents watch television news and listen to talk radio and it distorts their perception of risk.

Watching the TV news will absolutely distort your reality. I also think that being in hyper-controlled situations all the time causes you to be nervous in public spaces. I grew up in the suburbs and I was scared of taking the bus until college; now I do it everyday and hardly think about it. The more comfortable you become in uncontrolled situations, the less fearful you become in general.

We highly recommend expanding your comfort zone for personal growth.

Latsirk Eriam got me started on numerology recently. We thought it was quite interesting and intriguing. Both Emily and I found it to be surprisingly accurate.

Here are two recommended sites:

Decoz

12 house 

I’m going to the Integral International Development conference in April. Hooray!

I found out about the conference through JFKU, where I’m applying for grad school. One of the organizers is a professor at JFK. This is going to be a great way to jump right into the program. Not only that, the conference is in Istanbul! What could be better?

I’ll be sure to keep you updated on the conference just like we did for the Singularity Summit. If any of our readers are planning on attending the conference, please let me know.

Steve Pavlina has been doing a raw food trial this month which we’ve been following with mixture of amusement and disgust. 84 bananas? Yuck.

I heard about raw foodists a few months ago and Laura and I have been steadily increasing our raw food intake ever since. Here are our findings:

(You are hereby forewarned that a discussion of yucky bathroom topics follows.)

First of all, I have been eating 99% vegetarian since September. In college I did the same thing, but at that time I ate a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches and other unhealthy stuff. This time I am doing things right, putting the veg back in vegetarian you might say.

Even this time around I was eating a lot of dairy at first, which I have cut back significantly in the last three months. Many days I am entirely vegan (except for honey). The biggest differences I’ve noticed are that I feel much better after eating and I have to eat more often.

Now for the raw food. I would estimate that my diet is hovering around 30% raw. This is not very much for a raw foodist, but compared to what I was eating before (about 2%), this is a huge change. I am eating more fruit and lots of raw vegetables.

One of the strangest effects so far has been in the toilet. When Laura and I were going to yoga class regularly, I looked into a yogic diet. On this diet, your poop is supposed to float. All of it, all the time. I thought that was totally strange and couldn’t really imagine it happening. Guess what. It happens. My poop is consistently floating. When I go eat something unhealthy, like a big plate of nachos or meat, it sinks. So cool.

Another effect is that I can’t eat things like I used to. For example, usually I bring my own food to work at the group home, but the other night they made corn bread. I love corn bread. So I filled up a cup with corn bread and put some milk in there and ate it. Yum yum yum. I was on a roll, so I made a quesadilla with a flour tortilla and some cheap cheese. Let me tell you, not ten minutes later I had a stomach ache like none I’ve had since the Peace Corps. I had to make myself throw up for about 15 minutes. The corn meal and flour had combined to make these big, dry pellets that felt like a huge rock in my tummy. Disgusting. I am going to cut back on white flour and definitely steer clear of cornbread.

We highly recommend introducing more raw foods into your diet. You will notice a difference after just a few days, even with only a modest increase of raw foods. Just being conscious of what you eat can create a marked shift in your appetite. My next goal is to cut back on sugar.

I’m going to cover a lot of ground here so bear with me.

From BetterHumans I was led to this Edge World Question Center response from Martin Rees:

Darwin himself noted that “not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity”. Our own species will surely change and diversify faster than any predecessor —— via human-induced modifications (whether intelligently-controlled or unintended), not by natural selection alone. Just how fast this could happen is disputed by experts, but the post-human era may be only centuries away.

This quote brought me back to a question I have asked Laura many times: How do you reconcile reincarnation with exponential population growth? You can see that as the human population increases, other populations have decreased. It is really an energy shift from plants and animals to increasing numbers of humans. I got to thinking about this last night as I was watching Planet Earth. I was afraid that the series would be depressing, making me think about how destructive mankind is, but I am really enjoying it. Still, as I watched it I wondered, what are we here for? It seems we do more harm than good in the natural world.

I think that this idea of “post-humanism” is key. We can consciously evolve, using our technology to maintain the planet while still expanding the horizons of human potential. Rebalancing the energy that has shifted from nature to humanity, we can continue to grow as a whole. I think humans might exist to be the conscious witnesses of the material universe. The Tao (God, universal life-force, whatever) has manifested itself in nature and in each of us. Needless destruction of nature goes against the Tao and thereby causes injury to each person. A positive post-human future would result in a harmony between nature and technology, with man and the intermediary. Perhaps we are the catalyst for a post-natural universe: the Singularity.

Technology is neither our enemy nor our savior. I believe it is the natural evolution of the Tao as embodied in matter. A tree becomes a table becomes a calculator becomes a laptop and so on. Which is closest to infinity? The tree at the source or the technology on the horizon? It is an endless loop of potential that we have the responsibility to be stewards of.

Laura is reading Grace and Grit and we got into a discussion about Ken Wilber’s criticism of Joseph Campbell. Essentially, Campbell defended organized religion on the grounds that all religions use mythology to explain the same universal truth. Wilber argues in Grace and Grit that while that may be true, the vast majority of religious people take their chosen mythology literally, so the damage is done anyway.

I came upon another interesting criticism of Joseph Campbell at Diary of a Daoist Recluse:

Over the summer I read The Masks of God by Joseph Campbell and wrote a post about how much I enjoyed the experience. What I didn’t say there, however, was how unsatisfying I found his concluding remarks. Campbell was a firm believer in the maxim that “the East is East and the West is West, and never the twain shall meet”. At the core of this belief was his thought that the Eastern faiths of Hinduism, Buddhism and Daoism were ultimately life denying.

I’m not well versed in Campbell’s work, but I found this really surprising. Laura and I watched Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth and he seemed to lean more towards the Eastern traditions. Then again, the focus of that lecture series seemed to be to introduce Americans to Hinduism and Buddhism.

Anyway, I really liked the Recluse’s explanation of Taoist practices:

Zhuangzi believed that human beings are at their best when “heaven” lives through them, or, when people “merge with the Dao”. This is not some sort of cosmic daze, but rather when people develop an appropriate form of intuitive spontaneity that allows them to do the right thing in the right way at the right time—without having to think about it. He uses the analogy of a skilled tradesman who has developed the “knack” of his craft and suggests that a sage has a similar “knack” for living.

This has been my understanding of Taoism from the first time I read the Tao Te Ching. It has always seemed extremely “life affirming” so I’m really surprised that Joseph Campbell would disagree. I need to read The Masks of God to figure out what’s going on here.

During the course of my 36-hour shift at the group home, I sometimes feel myself devolving into a 10th grader. I try to counteract this phenomenon with some intellectual fare from Google Video. My latest selection was the BBC documentary The Century of the Self.

This four part series takes us through the history Freudian psychology and its effects on American culture. Freud’s nephew founded a new field which used the theories of subconscious motivation to influence consumer purchases and voter loyalties; he called the field public relations. The documentary also touches on various New Age practices and the manipulation of independent thinkers in recent elections.

It’s a long series, but well worth it. It will definitely have you questioning the underlying forces of American culture and your how your own choices might be manipulated.

(Here is some criticism of the series to keep things balanced.)

Here at ConsideringtheUniverse, we like to make sure we include practical advice or concrete examples to explain our ideas. We don’t want to get lost in lofty ideals, complicated theories or fantasy land (and we don’t want our readers to either). I have the tendency towards this much more than the ever practical/tactical Emily. I like to blame this penchant on my parents, who -despite being extremely interesting, creative, rather non- traditional and dare I say even almost perhaps maybe perfect (just like all parents of course!) — more than probably passed on this tendency to me.

Anyway all of this to say that this post shall attempt to give a brief outline of some of my father’s work on Sensemaking (especially now that it has become a bit more practical).

I also wish to add a disclaimer (or a bit of history): Since my youth– I have dreaded anyone asking my dad what he does. He never had some simple answer like, “I am a businessman” or “I am a teacher” or even the partially-true “I am a sign language interpreter” (his part time job and my insistent response -much to his chagrin- to the question). Instead, he always endeavored to provide the most truthful response to the question that he could– which invariably required what could be described as “a long-winded response.” His response usually evoked some eye rolling or audible groaning on my part. However now (in the infinite wisdom of my mid twenties) I shall in some small way attempt to rectify my sullen teenage reactions by telling the world about what my dad REALLY does.

Here’s the short version: He learned about, researched and studied Sensemaking (a type of communications theory). He created an interview methadology using Sensemaking framework. He then created a company that uses the interview methodology. He also is a sign language interpreter.

What is Sensemaking?

According to Gary Klein: It is “a motivated, continuous effort to understand connections (which can be among people, places, and events) in order to anticipate their trajectories and act effectively”. That’s not so helpful. Wikipedia adds:

• Forming an awareness of key elements relevant to the situation. This entails knowing the who, what, when and where.

• Forming an understanding of what it all means in some bounded context, based upon past experiences, training, education and cognitive capabilities. This entails:
  • Forming hypotheses and making inferences, i.e. generalizations (predictions or anticipations) about future events.
  • Forming a sense of the implications for different courses of action.
• Making decisions by:
  • Generating alternative response actions to control the situation.
  • Identifying the objectives, constraints, and factors that influence the feasibility and desirability of each alternative.
  • Conducting an assessment of these alternatives.

Ok. So sensemaking is basically making sense of a situation.

What is the interview methodology and why is it awesome (or creepy)?

The interview methodology uses the conceptual framework of sensemaking– which just basically says that people are constantly consciously and unconsciously “making sense” of their environment (taking in input, organizing it, deciding on actions). The interview technique, using this framework, the elicits tacit knowledge, unconscious “sensemaking,” thought patterns, and/or “deep smarts” from its inteviewees. Basically the interview can reveal not only what is going on in your conscious mind but also some parts of your semiconscious and unconscious mind as well.

One guy who was interviewed using the techniques said, “They’re fantastic at coming up with what your experience was, then digging deeper to things you might not remember… Their process kind of unveils it all, like maybe discussing your dreams or something.”

I have been interviewed using the technique. It’s not something I particularly like doing with my dad- it works far too well and he learns way too much.

Sagis Corp - The Company and what they do.

So the company, Sagis Corp, was recently featured in the Star Tribune: here. Sagis Corp uses the interview technique, and their software, called SagisSense to preserve the experience and deep smarts of top level executives who are leaving or retiring.

Companies can use this deeper information to reduce training costs, minimize disruption from a departing employee, create repeatable and efficient processes, and improve sales success. The end result is that Sāgis can drastically increase your company’s performance by giving you the information needed to make better decisions. (Hmm, if that paragraph sounds markety, it’s cause I stole it from one of their marketing fliers).

From the Star Tribune: Frank Berdan spent more than three decades at a Fortune 500 company but after retirement had no way to pass on the knowledge he had gained to help train a successor…The depth of what Sagis was able to uncover about what Berdan did and why he did it was astonishing, Berdan said. “It’s a structured interview process, facilitated by some software that’s pretty clever,” Berdan said. “At the end of the process, the keys to my success were a lot more apparent. It was enlightening.”

Personally I am highly relieved my dad is using this technique on executives now and no longer on me. Can you imagine delving deeply into your unconscious thought processes every time you ate too many cookies and spoiled your dinner? Teehee, just kidding Dad.

So that’s the short answer to, “What does your dad do?”

What about my mom you wonder? Whole other ball of wax…