Realising Human Potential

Adapted from writings in the 1960s, 80s, and 90s. Updated Feb 2015.

The paper is about what Jesuit palaeontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1955) termed ‘hominising’, meaning evolving and realising human potential as a naturally occurring global phenomenon. It also raises the theme of social ecology rather than social engineering, as human potential can be used, like the surgeon’s scalpel, for good and evil. It explores the tapping of human potential in many ways - personally, interpersonally, communally, inter-communally, as well as socially, culturally, and interculturally. It outlines a naturally occurring phenomenon that seemed to escalate since the 1960s - exploring and evolving processes for accessing human potential - for transforming ways of being, and passing on ways that work in evolving human potential. It introduces some of the processes expanding the exploring of personal, group, communal, cultural, societal, and other processes hominising humanity. It outlines how hominising processes that work have been spreading viral like through socially ecological self-organising human potential networks throughout the East Asia Oceania Australasia Region and further afield. It ends with links to further reading.

This paper is one of a series on human potential – on potential humans realising more and more of their possibilities - what Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1955) in his book, ‘The Phenomenon of Man’ termed hominising. This paper largely derives from six years of action research into this hominising phenomenon between 1962 and 1967, and another six years between 1985 and 1990. This action research has been carried out by groups of people in Sydney, Australia with backgrounds in anthropology, biology, clinical hypnosis, clinical psychology, clinical sociology, criminology, crisis counselling, cultural studies, humanitarian law, indigenous studies, medicine, pastoral work, psychiatry, and social work. Some people were involved in both the 1960s and 1980s. The 1960s group was called the Psychiatric Research Study Group and at one time there were 180 members on the Group’s mailing list (refer Psychiatric Research Study Group, p. 265 in Cultural Keyline). The 1980s group was unnamed. Both times this activity had a sustained framing in social ecology and was supported by Dr Neville Yeomans (1927-2000), a community psychiatrist, psychologist, sociologist, and humanitarian law barrister. A collection of awareness experiences based upon Neville Yeomans ways may be found at Living.

It is clearly self-evident that Homo sapiens have to be doing a lot better than is presently happening. Homo sapiens have massive potential that has not yet been realised; this being the case, you may want to have a brief search of the Internet using search terms like:

o Human potential

o The Human Potential Movement

o New Age

o The Age of Aquarius

o Consciousness Raising

o Jesuits

You’ll find some people with the view that all of these are the personification of evil. Jesuit palaeontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was banned from publishing his writings; his banned works were published posthumously. The Good Book gives a reasonable test, ‘By their fruits you shall know them’. ‘Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes.’ As a starting point, if people can do much better as a species, it’s time to start mobilising potential. We have moved into an epoch in the evolving of life on Earth wherein the term ‘Homo sapiens’ (sapiens meaning ‘wise’) seems poorly chosen. Species extinction is a feature of earth-life with over 99% of all species that have ever lived on earth becoming extinct. Collectively, as Homo sapiens we are currently creating the conditions for our own extinction at the very time when some on Earth are beginning to realise that our human potential for wisdom and thriving wellness seems boundless. As Teilhard de Chardin (1955) wrote in ‘The Phenomenon of Man’:

Under our modern disquiet, what is forming and growing is nothing less than an organic crisis in evolution.

In their paper Biology of Love Maturana & Verden-Zöller, et. al. (1996) write of a pressing need to evolve a biology of love wherein humans evolve away from homo aggressans and towards homo amans (loving).

As one aspect of human potential, this present paper reports on the 1980s group accessing and using unconscious mind phenomena, including unconscious behaviours, movement, capacities, communicating, competences, conversing, disclosing, experiencing, knowing, learning, memories, reporting, resilience, resources, speaking, understanding, wisdom, and other potentials. Also explored in this paper is being competent beyond conscious competence. The paper closes with suggestions for further reading, and the location of research archives to post doctoral level.

Following Teilhard-de-Chardin, this paper is using the term hominising to denote the process by which humans may become more truly human; the process by which potential humans may be realising more and more of human valued possibilities. Our continued existence as a species may well be at stake.

A Place to Start

Living – Mini Awareness Experiences for transforming from existing to Living.

The Unconscious and Potential Humans

The unconscious mind is one of the vast aspects of human potential yet to be richly and openly explored. Over the years some have speculated that the unconscious is the place for the repressed and the problematic. There has been some narrow exploring of the unconscious heavily filtered through preconceived notions. There may be some problematic aspects of the unconscious if we are endeavouring to explore and elicit from the unconscious mind of a profoundly disconnected dysfunctional person. We may at first have some problematic flowing, especially if that is what we are intending to find. The unconscious may well send forth what we ask for! And if an unconscious mind is filled with dysfunctional ruling ideas and repressions, how does one transform this mind towards wellness? And if the majority of people on earth are in this state, how does one or more begin transitioning to a better world?

It seems from action research experience by this group of human potential researchers in the 1980s that the unconscious has potential to be vast and filled with psycho-social-emotional resources and resilience ways for nurturing wellness and practical wise acts.

During this action research some people who were into denigration and self-harm in everyday life evidenced considerable capacity for caring and nurturing at unconscious levels.

From early in life people are taking on knowledge, experience, competences and perhaps after a time, wisdom – some very young ones are amazing in their insight. Sometime along the way from conception, the young commence conscious experience which increases as we have new experiences. This increase in consciousness may be termed ‘consciousness raising’.

After a time, familiarity, routine, and sameness, along with dissociative states may mean increase in consciousness begins to slow down. After a time, consciousness itself declines. Modern life has so many contributors to separation and the consequent differing forms of disconnect that for many, potential for consciousness is curtailed. People can become massively shut down. From the Alternative and Human Potential movements of the 1970s and other places has come an interest in consciousness raising.

At any one time we are only conscious of what few things we are attending to. We can have knowledge, experience, competences and wisdom, and these may become available by ‘bringing them to mind’.

We can be experiencing little or no consciousness of having all manner of knowledge, experience, and competences; though they may become available to us if we go inwards and are able to access them.

We can know things without conscious perception of input. Visual input is widely processed not just in the visual cortex. A glimpse of this occurred for a woman who had a brain lesion blocking some neural pathways linking her visual processing in the parietal lobe with visual processing in her temporal lobe. Because of this lesion she experienced no consciousness of seeing what another person was currently doing in her right peripheral vision, although she could correctly report that that person in her peripheral vision field was holding an envelope at an oblique angle. She could report from her parietal lobe visual processing how and where things were happening. This person had knowledge that became conscious at the moment of being asked what the person in her peripheral field was doing, even though she reported that she could not see the person who was in her peripheral vision field. The parietal lobe visual processing of where and how things were happening was still being processed in her brain. Other intact pathways between her parahippocampal memory areas and her temporal lobe enabled her to recognise that what the person was holding was an envelope. Pathways between her temporal lobe and her speech production in her motor cortex enabled her to say that it was an envelope being held at an oblique angle.

Through this experience, she was recognising that she was safe; there was no recognition of danger. This was because of processing between her pathways involved in vision processing between her visual cortex, her amygdala in her temporal lobe, and her emotional centres in her hypothalamic limbic region, along with her links to her locus coeruleus in the pons area of her brain stem were maintaining a relaxed state through the relative balance between her sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Through all of her processing that was still integrated and working, her visual consciousness of seeing the other person’s actions was not functioning because of the lesion. This woman knew what was happening and could identify and speak about what was happening though she could not see it happening. This gives clues of how knowing and consciousness of knowing ‘work’ as two complementary processes, and gives clues to how all our senses, memories, emotions and verbalising and the rest work together in integrated ways.

At any one time we are only conscious of a miniscule part of our repertoire of resources, capacities, experience, learning, knowing, understanding, memories, competence, resilience, behaviours, wisdom and other potentials that may be accessed with consciousness. People can increase levels of conscious competence, though typically they’re involved in using competence with little awareness of the competence per se.

Many things we do ‘automatically’ – from habit - and that can have functional value.

How our various senses work is integrated. Habits involve integrating within and between moving, sensing and feeling. Both functional and dysfunction habitual behaviour involve this integrating. An unexpected interrupt (refer the Interrupt Segment in By the Way) can have habitual processes dis-integrate. Refer By the Way - Appendix Ten. This has implications for both flexibility and habit and human potential in hominising.

Also refer:

o Transforming the Whole of It

o Healing the Mind Body

From the 1980s action research in Sydney all the aspects of the conscious mind seem replicated in the unconscious mind - resources, capacities, experience, learning, knowing, understanding, memories, capacities, competence, resilience, behaviours, wisdom and other phenomena.

The unconscious mind may well be like, in some respects, the proverbial fly on the wall – in a privileged relating and intimate observing and recording role of everything that happens both inside and outside of us. Seems the unconscious can engage as audience and as crowd to the myriad psychodynamic happenings within and between us, as well as having access to all sensory input from outside and in. On using both audience and crowd effects, refer Big Group - Using Collective Social Forces, p. 223 in Cultural Keyline.

Seems that our unconscious also has scope to contemplate, ponder and reflect; it also seems to have endless storage space and massive archives of goodness knows what order - also access perhaps to:

o Cellular memory

o The information carrying and processing capacity of the cytoskeleton – the material that cellular walls are made from

o Inherited memory

o Morphic resonance and attunement

o Information from the quantum field, as well as

o Memory in water, air and who knows what else.

Seems the unconscious mind can also multitask and operate bewilderingly fast. We know that near the speed of light, time slows. It presumable has scope for very fast search and access, and processes for holistic interconnecting and inter-relating with ease. It seems to be potentially light years ahead of our conscious mind.

As we are taking on various competences in differing domains of life we are taking these on at both conscious and unconscious levels, and evidence suggests that the unconscious takes on competences faster and far better.

This may well be in part because of the holistic integrated aspects of unconscious processes, and that perhaps the unconscious has all the time in the universe let alone the world.

It may well be that when elite athletes report ‘being in the zone’, they are in a state wherein they are accessing unconscious competence as they stay in the moment with a sense that time has slowed down.

People may take on unconscious knowing, experience, competence and wisdom that are not normally available for accessing through the conscious mind. Expressed differently - knowing, experience, competence and wisdom and others mentioned above are ‘contained’ in both the conscious and unconscious minds.

People typically never think about accessing their unconscious, and if they try to, they typically find they cannot access its content. Despite this, content from their unconscious mind may ‘flow forth’. People typically do not notice this flow.

Much of what is ‘flowing’ from the conscious mind is also not conscious. People may be immersed in the flow and not attending to and noticing the content of the flow. If they are noticing, this is a fragmentary experience - not passing even to short term memory. If asked to repeat what they just said or did, they typically cannot remember.

Experiencing awareness of awareness may increase one’s capacity to become aware of verbal and non-verbal behaviours occurring in another person that are emanating from conscious and unconscious levels.

People can acquire experience and competence in recognising, noticing, and attending to another person or persons’ unconsciously expressed behaviours both verbal and non verbal while the person concerned is oblivious to this flow.

Refer the video between 1.00 minutes and 2.00 minutes in Virginia Satir– Communication and Congruence.

The 1980s group evolved processes for enhancing competence in seeing, hearing, alongside competence in using the following processes in linked ways:

o Quality rapport and attending

o Engaging in awareness of awareness

o Attending in all senses to all of the inter-connecting, inter-relating, inter-depending (connexity perceiving)

o Sensing for the part in the whole and the whole in the part (the holographic)

o Recognising differences in the nature of the flow

o Evolving and using highly refined attending skills and

o Remaining attending to the here and now (and not going into inner experience where we can be fully disconnected from external input and be functionally deaf and blind to the outside reality).

o Another aspect is learning what to look for and sense as content and process coming from another’s unconscious.

o Sensing the free energy in the system and context – often found close to the stuck energy; work with the free energy (refer pages 27, 240, 245, and 294 in Cultural Keyline)

o Surrender and catch – surrender involves:

o total involvement,

o suspension of received notions

o pertinence of everything

o identification, and

o risk of being hurt

In surrendering one leaves oneself open to ‘catch’ - meaning ‘the cognitive

or existential result, yield or harvest, new conceiving or new conceptualising – a new being-in-the-world’.

One can become competent in discriminating between things flowing from another’s conscious mind and their unconscious mind. This increasing experience and competence to recognise, and notice content from another person’s conscious or unconscious minds may emerge from using the above competences.

On acquiring competence in engaging with the unconscious refer:

o By the Way : Appendix Five – Increasing Awareness of External and Internal Focus

o By the Way

Another level of enrichment is acquiring experience and competence in how to engage with others and support them in socially ecological ways via making use of their unconscious communicating.

Typically, people give little thought to or are unaware of this level of unconscious resources and how we can engage with social ecology and safety in supporting others to increase wellness in their lives. A resource for engaging well with others is the free E-Book By the Way that contains 130 annotated stories from life relating to processes discussed in this paper

There are processes that can elicit behaviours from another person’s unconscious. Refer the segment titled Astounding in By the Way, page 117.

To the astute observer, another person may give evidence of knowledge, experience, competences, and wisdom emerging from her or his unconscious and this person may have no consciousness that this is happening.

For example, the person may quickly come up with brilliant things to do; ideas may come in a flash fully formed and very complex.

Another thing that may happen is that a person is talking about some mess in their lives and that they are feeling so incompetent, out of their depth and overwhelmed. Then in the flow of all of this they say and do things that would be a very reasonable, sensible and effective set of things to do to resolve the issues, and yet they do not notice the extraordinary wisdom in what they have just said and done, and they have no idea that it has come from within themselves! If asked to repeat what they just said and did, they cannot do so. They have no consciousness of what they just did. Here was a valuable message from their own unconscious and they did not consciously attend to it. This may be happening regularly in people’s lives.

It is possible for an experienced person to foster more of this unconscious communicating from one or more other people, and to be able to elicit these unconscious emergences. Refer By the Way.

Examples

As an aspect of engaging in clinical psychology research a women is being asked about her health history. After establishing rapport with this woman she is given some imbedded suggestions that support her going into an everyday trance state where she remains conscious of her surroundings, though in a state that differs from her normal ways of being in the world:

And you’ll possibly.....find the coming experiences very interesting......and potentially very practically useful.....and this may well......be an opportunity for you....to.....learn some things about yourself.....in new ways...

and then after a time she is asked whether she has any medical condition. She immediately points her index finger into the side of her thigh as she answers the question with a ‘no’.

This woman was asked ten further questions relating to health and each time the person unconsciously pointed to the same spot on her thigh. Then she suddenly remembered and said that she was recently diagnosed as having diabetes, and again she pointed to the side of her thigh. She was asked if she was on medication. She said yes, and again she pointed to the side of her thigh. She said that she was injecting insulin, and again she pointed to the side of her thigh. She was asked where in her body she injects herself. And she did not know!

It took her some time before she pointed to her thigh.

She had already unconsciously communicated exactly where she injected herself with insulin thirteen times!

Another example of un-conscious gestures and other behaviours:

A friend asked me to help a friend of his who was addicted to gambling, and this fellow was using so much ‘unconscious’ communication, I was sure I was being set up by my friend, though this fellow was for real; he was telling me in a constant un-conscious stream exactly what he needed to do to change, communicated to me from his unconscious level. He would for example in talking about stopping gambling, combine:

o the hand up ‘stop’ signal of the policeman

o the turning head signalling ‘No!’

o and the instant attending to something else

o accompanied by a state change

as a sequential strategy indicating:

o resolve

o will

o collapsing states, and

o shifting awareness

As he does this sequence he says:

Other people can do things….(then the above sequence).

Though I don’t know how to do that!

And yet at an unconscious level, he does know, as he just showed me the strategy!

Another similar story from life:

A woman who was feeling helpless changed to a vibrant energised posture as she said:

I would like to have a lot of energy like other people,

Then she collapses and says:

Although I don’t know how to do that.

And yet at an unconscious level she had just shown me how she can tap into free energy. In the collapsed position, easily fatiguing muscles support the body in standing; their aerobic capacity is quite short, used up in around 45 seconds in the 400-metre run.

And if the posture is well balanced, then non-fatiguing tendons and ligaments do the work in having the bones support us against gravity with little tiring.

In the Diagram below the orange line depicts a range of consciousness potential increasing through time termed, ‘Range 1 Consciousness’. It depicts a person with the range increasing for a time, and then tending to flatten out with little further taking on of new consciousness.

The blue line depicts a range of Unconscious Mind potential for this same person increasing through time termed, ‘Range 1 Unconsciousness’. That range also increases then tends to flatten out with little further taking on of new unconsciousness.

The mauve line depicts a person with a higher level of consciousness termed ‘Range 2 Consciousness’. This range increases over time in life-long learning.

The red line depicts a Range 2 Unconsciousness. The range increases over time in life-long learning in taking on of new unconscious resources.

Unconscious Competence 2 Range

Conscious Competence 2 Range

Unconscious Competence 1 Range

Conscious Competence 1Range

This raises the following questions:

What activities and processes can:

o Increase consciousness?

o Increase the potential of our conscious mind?

o Increase the content and quality of conscious mind resources (knowledge, experience, competences wisdom and other phenomena)?

o Increase capacity to access relevant conscious mind resources and processes as appropriate to context

o Increase the potential of our unconscious mind?

o Increase the content and quality of unconscious mind resources (knowledge, experience, competences wisdom and other phenomena)?

o Increase capacity to access unconscious mind resources as appropriate to context?

o Increase capacity to do social ecology and ecology checks on matters flowing from one’s unconscious?

People vary in competence in respect of various task demands. In the diagram below the orange line depicts a Range 1 Conscious Competence. The range increases then tends to flatten out with little further taking on of new competences. The blue line depicts a Range 1 Unconscious Competence. This range also increases then tends to flatten out with little further taking on of new unconscious competences. The orange dot represents the competence required to effectively cope with a particular task demand. Note that the level of competence required by the ‘orange’ task demand is well within the range of conscious competence.

Notice that a task demand that has a required competence level depicted by the blue dot, the level of competence required exceeds conscious competence. However, if one was able to tap into unconscious competence then one would be competent beyond conscious competence as the blue dot is within the unconscious competence range.

Unconscious Competence 1Range

Conscious Competence 1Range

Task Demand met with Conscious competence 1

Task Demand unmet with Conscious Competence 1 though met with Unconscious Competence 1 – being competent beyond Conscious Competence

Back in the 1960s Dr Neville Yeomans explored the evolving of therapeutic community within Australia. This was a first for Australia, and Neville is recognised as a world pioneer of therapeutic community practice. Neither Neville nor any of the staff nor patients had ever done non-drug community psychiatry before. No one else in Australia had done so. Refer Cultural Keyline - Being in the Zone of Growth, p. 865.

Neville was exploring processes for extending the competence of everyone involved (staff, patients, administration staff, and even the cleaners) in non-drug community psychiatry at both the conscious and unconscious levels.

Everyone was thrown in the proverbial deep end in exploring how to heal themselves and each other. The report from Neville, staff, patients, outpatients and external researchers was that regularly they individually and collectively became able to have competence beyond conscious competence.

When I asked ‘and there were miracles at Fraser House?’ Neville said with flourish:

Of course it was miraculous. We were the best in the planet, and we all believed this, so we would acknowledge our failings, as we were streets ahead of everyone else.

I was accused of being an impossible optimist. I sense I was more of a fatalistic optimist. I was context driven - if I go to ‘creative context’ then ‘everything is creative’ - it worked like that.

As for the miraculous - well that was a calm night – peaceful – remember we were filled with the very bad and the very mad - the under controlled and the over controlled.

Neville’s use of the term ‘creative context’ was code for accessing theme-based unconscious competences, as in access creativity.

Neville particularly engaged in all manner of activities to increase the rich functioning and capacity of both his conscious and unconscious minds.

In the diagram below, the mauve line depicts a person like Neville with a higher level of conscious competence; for this paper termed, ‘Range 2 Conscious Competence’.

Neville increased this range through life-long experiential learning. The red line depicts a ‘Range 2 Unconscious Competence’. Neville increased the range through engaging in life-long experiential learning in taking on new unconscious competences.

Note the mauve dot below would represent a task demand that exceeds the Range 1 Unconscious Competence range. However, someone like Neville could complete that task with conscious competence.

Two further task demands that exceed Neville’s conscious competence can be carried out with Neville’s unconscious competence.

Neville was continually exploring ways of working beyond conscious competency competently with social ecology and safety.

Unconscious Competence 2 Range

Conscious Competence 2 Range

Unconscious Competence 1 Range

Conscious Competence 1 Range

Task Demand met with Conscious Competence 1

Task Demand unmet with Conscious Competence 1 though met with Unconscious Competence 1 – being competent beyond Conscious Competence

Task Demand met with Conscious Competence 2

Task Demand unmet with Conscious Competence 2 though met with Unconscious Competence 2 – being competent beyond Conscious Competence

Higher Task Demand unmet with Conscious Competence 2 though met with Unconscious Competence 2 – being competent beyond competence

Neville said that ideas as to what to do would arrive instantly fully formed. Then he would give the idea a split second kinaesthetic check for whether it ‘felt okay’ and if it checked out, from experience of this process working he would have confidence in the received unconscious process and go with it.

Neville had specified and could easily recognise the distinct located sensory ‘signature’ of both his ‘it’s okay’ and ‘it’s not okay’ kinaesthetic checks. For example:

o His ‘it’s okay’ phenomenal signal may have been a fast moving pleasant sensation that moved on a slightly oblique line from his heart to his solar plexus, leaving a warm calm feeling.

o His ‘it’s not okay’ phenomenal signal may have been a fast moving unpleasant sinking feeling in his solar plexus.

An example of what may well have been Neville Yeomans exercising competence beyond consciousness competence has been reported in the UK Therapeutic Communities website as the Stabbing the Wall incident at Neville’s therapeutic community. This story is repeated below.

In the early Sixties, a crisis started in an upstairs dorm in Fraser House, an 80 bed residential therapeutic community in Sydney Australia. Dr Neville Yeomans, the founding director heard the call to form a group at that dorm. The Unit protocol was to quickly form a group and draw upon the wisdom in the group whenever an emergency occurred. It was not the protocol to call Neville and wait for his advice. He happened to come to this emergency and responded fast to the dramatic context. Neville rushes up the stairs and finds a crowd outside the door of one of the rooms and the crowd parts as Neville rushes to the doorway and sees an outpatient wife, who by the way has no authority to be in Fraser House outside of Big and Small Group times. And she has no authority especially to be in the upstairs dorm. Neville sees that she is pleading with her husband, a patient - with a sort of 'caring concern' - for him calm down, and Neville sees that the husband has his back to the wife and that the husband is facing the corner stabbing the wall with a large knife which he shouldn't have in his possession.

And this husband is yelling, ‘I am going to kill her’ with enormous emotion, referring to his wife. On either side of the husband are staff-members with knockout injections ready to jab him with a syringe containing some sort of powerful narcotic if he makes any move to kill his wife.

The two staff on either side of the husband yell to Neville:

'Do we jab him?'

Even in these dramatic contexts, consistent with protocols, staff sought confirmation from others for action, if possible. So that's why they ask, ‘Do we jab him?’ And Neville sizes up the situation in a flash.

Now to pause for a moment; that is the context; I invite you to have a think now.

What would you do?

The Context:

o Husband highly aroused and in a very unstable state

o He has a large knife

o He’s stabbing wall

o He’s yelling that he's going to kill his wife

o The staff poised to inject the husband with the narcotic

o The placating wife right behind him; close enough to kill in a flash. It only takes a split second to turn and kill the wife and then himself, and/or the orderlies.

What would you personally do?

Everyone I talked to about Neville said that he was lightning fast and way ahead of everybody else.

Back in the upstairs room now, the staff had yelled:

‘Do we jab him?'

Do you know what Neville's reply was?

Neville was always looking for the free energy in the system. He learnt that from working with his father in evolving Keyline farming practice. He knew that the free energy may often found close to the stuck energy.

Neville was also using connexity perception. Neville was also instantly receiving cues from this particular context as to what to do next; being guided by context.

He was also sensing implication. He was looking for all of the inter-connecting and inter-relating, and all of the inter-depending aspects. And he was looking for symbolic significance; attending to the functional-in-context. On functional-in-context, refer Neville’s Role as Leader and his Group Processes on p.240 in Cultural Keyline.

Neville’s response was:

‘Jab the wife!’

Jab the wife! Neville was guided by the free energy in the system.

The husband had his back to the wife. He was stabbing the wall, not the wife.

What’s the symbolic message in that?

Perhaps you can reflect on this.

Neville sensed that the wife was the dysfunctional ‘driver’ of the husband's behaviour. Neville intervened so that Neville became the functional 'context driver' in the situation.

When Neville yelled out,

Jab the wife!

What happened?

The husband froze…......the two staff were confused….....…as Neville’s response was completely unexpected.....it was a classic interrupt!

Refer the Interrupt Segment in By the Way).

And immediately Neville said, ‘Jab the wife!’ what happened was that the wife who had been placating her husband turned in an absolute blinding rage and screamed obscenities at Neville, and in so doing revealing a side of herself that she had never revealed at Fraser House before.

So as not to have her provoke the husband to actually harm her, Neville immediately yelled again, ‘Jab the wife!’

Now a staff member did jab the wife while the other one stayed ready to jab the husband; and she collapses unconscious immediately.

(The wife had signed in as an outpatient and Neville was required to medicate outpatients if deemed necessary.)

And the husband, who had not turned around slowly turns the knife sideways and gently gives it to one of the staff and kneels down beside his wife and starts sobbing and stammering:

She was goading me to sneaking out of Fraser House to do more house robberies, and I want to stop all of that.

Now to give context - the husband had arrived as a patient at Fraser House some weeks before from Sydney’s Long Bay Jail where he was a frequent inmate on robbery charges. On his last burglary, the husband had uncharacteristically harmed an elderly couple who surprised him during the robbery. It was for this reason that the authorities suggested he be transferred to Fraser House for the last months of his sentence. It turned out that the demanding wife had been the catalyst for all of his crime. Only the husband and wife knew this was the case. After being in Fraser House for a time he wanted to break free of this cycle, though he loved his wife.

Neville described this man as ‘obsessed’ with his wife and ‘addicted to what was for him really toxic’ - and he also could not tell anyone that she was the relentless driver of his criminality.

None of this had ever been revealed by this couple before.

Neville recognised in an instant that this man was in what is termed a ‘double bind’. He could not betray his wife because if he did do this he may lose her. That’s the bind. And secondly, this loss was, for him, both unthinkable and un-discussable, and this is the double bind; and it was this double bind that Neville spotted, and till now the patient had never found his voice to say anything about his wife. Neville spotted the metaphorical message contained in the stabbing of the wall.

It meant:

'Someone shut my wife up'.

From this frame of meaning Neville could sense that stabbing the wall was functional in the context. It was a symbolic act expressing what the husband could not express in words. Neville supported this symbolic functionality as ‘free energy’ in the dysfunctional husband-wife relation. For a brief discussion of frame of meaning, refer the Meaning Segment on page 344 in By the Way.

Neville was supporting the functional aspects of things in context. Stabbing the wall was functional in context. Also the wife responding with venom was actually a good thing; was functional in context because in engaging in this behaviour, she was being totally honest for the first time in revealing her true nature in that moment to everyone present. This was functional in the context and confirming to Neville that his instant reading of the context was correct. And in being honest, the wife was tapping into her own ‘free energy’, perhaps for the first time in ages.

The wife was signed on as an outpatient, so Neville as head psychiatrist and director of the Unit had every right to administer drugs to her, and after the narcotic injection she slept for some time and then slipped off sheepishly, and the next day she was back and she fronted Big Group, and one of the Small Groups and her dysfunctional behaviour was discussed and stopped in its tracks.

All of what had happened in that upstairs dorm had happened extremely quickly. Psycho-emotional states can change very quickly. Learning can take place very quickly. Neville had acted in the upstairs dorm with high-speed precision.

Neville reframed the context for each of the four in the upstairs dorm by yelling:

‘Jab the wife!’

By saying these three words twice Neville created a context where major change occurred that also had ripple-on effects.

Neville's response, ‘Jab the wife!’ had a very different effect on each person present.

Each person in the room had a different definition of the situation, and Neville’s statement reframed each of these. (For a brief discussion of definition of the situation, and reframing, refer the Meaning Segment on page 344 in By the Way.) It increased the arousal in the wife, decreased the arousal in the husband, and had the staffers go into curious confusion, which is typically an ideal learning state, and Neville, in repeating the command, ‘jab the wife!’ interrupted the staff members' state and got action, reinforced the husband’s less aroused state, and removed the wife from the context. Once the wife had revealed her true role, Neville had to ensure that she was ‘removed’ quickly in case the husband did turn and hurt her, given that the un-discussable had now been revealed, and if the husband sensed he had irretrievably lost her there was a possibility that he may lash out and attempt to harm or kill her for causing him so much grief. So with her ‘jabbed’ and ‘removed’ from the context and her role in his criminality out in the open, and the husband’s fervent desire to give up criminality revealed, he immediately found his voice, and that which had been un-discussable, is now out in the open and discussable.

A typical mainstream system response would have been to diagnose the husband as ‘the problem’ and that this ‘problem’ had to be ‘eliminated’ (rather than resolved). The husband would have been jabbed as a matter of course, the wife would have been sent home and nothing in the husband-wife dynamic would have changed. The husband would have been put in the ‘difficult case’ basket while the wife as ‘unknown source of dysfunction’ would have sustained his dis-integration

Upon his arrival Neville had used his highly evolved conscious attending competences along with his highly evolved connexity perceiving to inform his unconscious mind. Neville said that the meaning and significance of all the aspects in that upstairs dorm when he first rushed to the doorway came to him fully formed in an instant accompanied with precisely what to do and say and how to say it congruently (with matching of both verbal and non-verbal behaviours) – with full force and authority.

Moments before in his office Neville had been in a very different state and engaged in other matters. This is an example of how Neville could draw upon all of his resources conscious and unconscious.

He was fully conscious of absorbing every detail of the context in a glance and appreciating everything’s significance, the drivers, and the implications, and noticing the free energy in the system, and knowing with certainty that his unconscious in its fullness was instantly available and there it was – the things to do and say, the implications and what he would say and do as the scenario played out.

Neville was lighting fast. He would give the information received from his unconscious a kinaesthetic check to confirm it was okay in context, got that confirmed and yelled ‘Jab the wife’. The scenario played out as he had predicted.

To summarise - in the Sydney action research group in the 1980s they were exploring ways for tapping human potential personally, interpersonally, communally, inter-communally, as well as socially, culturally, and interculturally. They were exploring the forming and expanding of consciousness and unconsciousness – the interacting between the many aspects of the neuro-logical brain system (with logic used in the original sense as the pattern whereby all things are connected). They were exploring and evolving socially ecological processes and practices - processes for accessing human potential and transforming ways of being, and passing on ways that work well in expanding human potential in all of these modes (personally, inter-personally etc.). In essence they were exploring personal, group, communal, cultural, and societal processes for hominising humanity.

Recall that this term hominising denotes processes by which humans may become more truly human; the process by which potential humans may be realising more and more of human valued possibilities. To pick up on Dr Jim Cairns theme in his self published book ‘Human Growth – Its Source and Potential’ p.18 (1984), they were exploring what is one of the most important and significant ideas in human history, namely, that there is a vast undeveloped human potential, and that there are ways that this potential may be accessed, used and extended. Jim talks of the growing realising that transforming in the form of letting go of the power of ‘ruling ideas’ Jim quotes Engels as writing of the need to go beyond altering material relations in production to altering hegemony (the ruling ideas) accepted more or less by everyone. Engels wrote:

The greatest failing of Marx and I is that we did not enquire sufficiently as to how the hegemony was formed.

Removing distorting, repressing, and limiting ideas is fundamental. Any transforming of political, legal, economic, and financial structures without also transforming ruling ideas – and without removing or transforming ideas that are distorting, repressing, and limiting – will only replace one problematic with another.

For cooperative links between Dr Jim Cairns (Deputy Prime Minister of Australia) and Dr Neville Yeomans refer page 536 in Cultural Keyline.

Increasingly, people are becoming very interested in transforming human potential. Those who are interested in maintaining their current power want to stifle this phenomenon or skew it to further their ends to the detriment of the many.

Increasingly, people are:

o Becoming aware of the power people of the previous sentence and understanding the processes they are attempting to use.

o Becoming able to transform themselves with others towards:

o Bypassing, minimising, and collapsing energy which is stifling or skewing

o Evolving Homo sapiens and their ways of living well on earth respecting all socially ecological life ways, life forms and planet earth

o Recognising their sovereign essence, potentials, capacities and bodymind resources

ON SOVEREIGNTY

Once upon a time a prince lusting after kingly power becomes sick unto death and no one in the Kingdom can heal him. Eventual the prince’s men scouring the Kingdom hear of the healing powers of the crone deep in the forest. When the prince is carried to her she tells him she will heal him only if he marries her first. Suffering badly and about to die he agrees.

After they return from the marriage ceremony and enter the bridal chamber his health is restored as his new princess wife removes her thick veil and he sees that she is young and beautiful. The next morning the prince wakes eager to show his beautiful princess wife to his people. He’s perplexed to find she is again the crone. ‘You now have a decision to make’, the Princess says. ‘Am I beautiful by day or by night? Choose!’ The prince, besotted with power cannot decide and leaves her and goes out alone in the Kingdom. That night the Princess is again beautiful and the next morning the prince awakens sore unto death. The Princess as crone in his eyes tells him. ‘What do you say in this matter? Beautiful by day or night? Or do you postpone deciding and die?’

And he struggles in his suffering until gentleness slowly descends upon him and with a soft radiance that is becoming he says with great love and affection, ‘You decide’. And with realising her sovereignty she becomes beautiful throughout her long life. And the prince went to his father and said, ‘Let us recognise and realise the sovereignty of every person of this fair Kingdom’. And this came to be. Little is known of how they did this though the Princess (wise woman of realised power essence) being the catalyst for the consciousness raising embodied experience of the Prince provides clues, and both were undoubtedly catalysts for others sharing his experience in body and mind - or perhaps better - in his bodymind. And later when his father died, the Prince became King, the first among equals in the Kingdom where all inhabitants were kings and queens, princes and princesses together contributing to enriching the special energy of this corner of the globe; and other people, hearing of this special place made long journeys to experience it for themselves.

Evolving a New Paradigm on Earth

A new paradigm of Human Betterment at heart involves transforming Humanity - transforming individual and collective human systems commencing with human bodies and human minds and how they relate with self and others. It is at heart Humanity that has to transform. Transforming humans realising their human potential and their inherent sovereignty may evolve New Paradigm systems of living well together replacing old paradigm politics, economics, finance, and the like.

Like the Prince, the world currently needs folk who begin having the realising of their essence; their inherent sovereignty, and the inherent sovereignty of all humanity. The world needs catalysts – people who can spark a consciousness raising transforming in others. The world needs second-order catalysts – people who can network in catalysing other catalysts.

Any such transforming of human bodies and minds needs to bypass the fantastic suppression and distortion used in targeted ways by the old paradigm. Few people ever suspect this targeting because it is all so normal, so unnoticeable. This typically unnoticed targeting is suppressed and distorted, and then internally repressed and dissociated; though when ‘scales’ fall from eyes the old paradigm totally loses its grip as it all becomes so much silliness and foolishness.

Australian Dr Jim Cairns in his book Human Growth – its Source...and Potential (1984) wrote of possibilities for Human evolution to become conscious, and for consciousness and intelligence becoming historical forces. Cairns suggested that the process of realising and fulfilling human needs may emerge and determine the character of society itself. Humanity can now become aware of the kind of human relations that produce a good society, and guarantee the fantastic growth in human potential which is then possible.

Humanity around the world in every country is now awakening in consciousness of the themes raised above. Processes for being catalysts for transforming action are evolving and been passed on in networks of networks.

Towards a New Paradigm

A New Paradigm is not coming from some alienating abstract top of the tree; rather it is evolving naturally on the ground and spreading one person thick like mushroom mycelium over all over the globe; and again like mycelium, there are hot spots where there’s a confluence of advantage – catalysing nodes. Adapting Kenneth Boulding (1956), new forms of social organizations throughout earth are evolving through catalytic roles linking together within networked channels of communication. Consciousness raising holds forth the potential of scales falling off people’s eyes so they can see the folly of being engrossed in the above old paradigm roles pretending to be New Paradigm, and raising their consciousness towards recognising the profound inappropriateness of every aspect of old paradigm roles in evolving a new paradigm of human betterment futures. That’s been the wisdom in the framing of New Paradigm values in action – as a sieve sorting out potential. So now people are beginning to recognise and realise new roles befitting their passion to contribute to better futures. Like in the above story, they may still remain first among equals with all that is noble and of fine worth while being engaged in profound catalytic roles in locally and laterally linking with others with raised consciousness and expanding human potential engaged in realising human potential throughout all of planet earth. Since before the 1980s, hominising processes that work have been, with social ecology, spreading viral like through self-organising human potential networks. This phenomenon has been spreading throughout the East Asia Oceania Australasia Region and further afield. These are grand times to be engaged in good works with other wise people all around the Earth - seek and ye shall find.

Some of the output of this phenomenon has been documented and archived in the Laceweb Archive.

Action towards Evolving a Thriving Earth:

Respectfully Resocialising – Going Down the Rabbit Hole

Evolving Criteria as Benchmarks for Wellbeing Action

Thriving Earth Treaty

Other References

Living

New Social Phenomena

The Fastest Growing New Social Movement on the Planet

Informal Networks and New Social Movements

Laceweb Sociograms

Community Ways for Healing the World