Your one stop for the latest info on accelerative learning, creativity enhancement, increasing your intelligence, and general self improvement
Contents
- A Personal Welcome
- Update on Project Renaissance
- Back to the Basics
- Matthew Turco’s “Knowledge, Facts, and the Ghost of Socrates”
- George Copsey’s “Image Streaming Phone Coaching”
- Win Wenger’s “Individuality Not Merely for the Sake of Individuality”
A Personal Welcome From the Editor
Click here for the first edition of the new Capital Ideasmiths.
Project Renaissance, the world’s leader in creativity and intelligence enhancement, has come a long way within the last few months. In light of the many modifications and formalizations this great non-profit organization is experiencing this periodical newsletter has been created. In celebration of this great event there have been a number of professional texts and books published online for free. But only those who are members of Project Renaissance may access them. How can you become a member? Simply click here.
For those unfamiliar with the main points of the many Project Renaissance teachings read on.
Sincerely,
Mike Cole, Editor for Capital Ideasmiths
An Update on Project Renaissance
Win Wenger, founder and president of Project Renaissance, is as busy as ever writing books, articles, speaking at various places, and holding his monthly thinktanks.
His newest breakthrough book, Discovering the Obvious, been sent to the printers and should be ready in slick publication form soon. It can still be ordered now in its pre-publication version.
More Winsight articles are due on the World Wide Web at “Hot Rod Your Head!” (http://botree.com) soon (probably in early May).
Michael Cole’s website at http://www.amateur-spirit.net has moved to http://www.exploreit.net. The old address still works, but it won’t for long. See the new additions there as well.
Matthew Turco’s site at http://www.anakin.com is undergoing an overhaul as he switches to a better software system. You can expect some great things from that site soon.
Be sure to check out the new additions to http://www.anakin.com and http://www.exploreit.net if you haven’t already!
A new online registration form and info provider for Double Festival 7, Project Renaissance’s *superb* worldwide interactive conference, is up at:
http://potentools.com/df.htm
Register early for a significant discount!
Grand Re-opening of the famous webzine Hot Rod Your Head! took place on May 1st. Win Wenger participated in a live celebrity chat at 9PM EDT there on that day. Hot Rod Your Head! can be found at:
http://www.botree.com/
The transcript for that event can be found at:
http://www.botree.com/chats/chat-win.htm
Find out what Image Streaming is and how to do it at:
http://www.exploreit.net/substance/imagestreaming.htm
Back to the Basics – Quick Tips for Improving your Abilities
by Michael Cole
Webmaster of Hot Rod Your Head and ExploreIt.Net
Tip: Get rid of the “noise” in your brain by taking a few moments to relax every day. For those of you who know Win Wenger’s Noise-Removal Breathing (from The Einstein Factor, among others) you might use that. There are many other breathing techniques for relaxation and behavior modification to be found in Win Wenger’s other book, Beyond OK. Relaxation can save your mind from aging, help remove “noise” and thus allow insights to come more readily, and even give you more energy.
Tip: Write down your ideas and observations. By doing so you use the power of reinforcement to become more observant and more creative. You are reinforcing the act to 1) make it easier to do again and, 2) reinforce all the processes associated with it (such as creativity and observation). It’s a great habit to get into. It makes self-improvement seem almost automatic, and always fun.
Image Streaming Phone Coaching
What’s it like to experience Image Streaming over the phone? As many on the Image Streaming Listserver know from first hand experience, it can be enlightening, exasperating, energizing & educational all in the same session.
by George Copsey
Webmaster of Realistic Solutions.
As I write this, I’m listening to an interview with the keyboard player for the rock group The Doors…the man obviously simply loves music…a musical genius! I’m stuffed from a big dinner my wise-woman wife made and faced with the task of living up to my agreement to provide 1,200 words for this edition of Capital Ideasmiths. So here I am at the keyboard…..my keyboard- how can I play this keyboard, make this fun…and educational- drawing forth from myself something of value to share? …..7% of the way there…to where? How has Image Streaming changed my life in the last two & a half years? What’s it like facilitating an Image Streaming workshop? What is ISing phone coaching ? How did I get to be doing what I do? What do I have to say of value to this sprightly, numinous group? Does Image Streaming really increase intelligence? What about people who have difficulty “getting” images? What can I share based on presenting ISing workshops and working over the phone with people from all over the world? “Am I doing it right?”
Questions, questions, questions……are the answer, as one wise man said, which focuses attention on the value of context in using our abilities. The context of phone coaching is intimate, energizing and truly amazing at times, particularly when you have the flash of an image your ISing phone partner, on the other end of the world, has before they say it out loud…and you say what you’ve seen in your mind’s eye and they respond- that’s just what I saw! The rapport that develops in an Image Streaming phone session can be remarkable, and lends weight to the concept of a holographic universe- a collective consciousness.
I suspect that the success that some have with ISing, and the “lack of success” others report, is due in part to a person’s tolerance of ambiguity- that learning to find your way through your own personal symbology is a journey, not something that can be done “by the book”.
Does ISing work for everyone? I have had a few sessions (very, very few) with people who had difficulty “getting” images. I even currently coach one of the world’s foremost success coaches using Image Streaming- her Image Streams violate most of the principles of Image Streaming- way too intellectual, halting…yet with split-second moments of brilliant light & insight that impel her to success in her life. The nano-seconds of light keep her coming back.
I suspect that even those having difficulty “getting” images are not realizing the other gains they may be getting outside of the context of simply “getting” images. A moment’s insight from looking at things differently..say, for example, a scientist actually becoming his lab equipment, running his Old Familiar experiment from within his equipment- as his equipment- and gaining new understanding…a writer’s immersion in a work of art and instantaneous transportation half way around the world through it’s beauty…a trainer’s creative genius expressed as a light shining over the circle of humanity she works with, connecting the energy between people in a love fest of learning.
All these are real gains from ISing sessions- some from people who’ve had trouble “getting” images. The ISing phone coaching sessions are designed to start people at a level they’ll be proficient at immediately (for some, simply describing out loud the room they’re in- eyes open if needed; or immediately launching into not just a full blown IS, but quickly taking them to a Borrowed Genius format for the quickest gains) to develop confidence, then guiding them (undermanaging!) to more advanced methods as they show themselves ready to grow.
Some of the most important lessons I’ve learned in doing these sessions are that:
A) People don’t generally trust their own perceptions very highly (our Culture trains us in this)
B) People want a guru to tell them if they’re doing things “right”
And that….
C) Ultimately, ISing regularly trains you to realize:
1. Who’s perceptions do you have, other than your own?
2. We’re all guru’s to ourselves, as we learn to trust the messages our subconscious mind is constantly broadcasting
What can we learn when we begin to develop confidence in our own ability to produce creative solutions by recognizing our own perceptions? That we can do more than we ever thought possible, and that the “Truth does have a ring” to it that can be noticed, among other places, …in the humility of Win Wenger, his openness to the ideas of novice ISers…and his generosity in sharing his ideas, discoveries & methods. All this serves to create a climate in which new ideas can SPRING forth from your creative genius- because finally, someone has shown you that the Answers really are in you.
All these are part of what I’ve learned in doing Image Streaming phone coaching and using Image Streaming as a tool with my regular clients. I’ve grown extraordinarily close, very quickly, to many of the ones I’ve coached in ISing over the phone. The creative lady whose IS took her to a beach, with an exotic wild animal by her side…..the talented coach who visualized her favorite place in the world and saw…sadness- that revealed to her information she’d been overlooking…the young man who used his session to learn how to learn mathematics more quickly…all these are a part of me now because of the sharing I’ve known through ISing.
A way to increase intelligence? OK, Win, if you say so…..and to me, the largest benefits have been and continue to be the emotional richness, the rapport, the shared experiences of a 3-way International IS; and knowing that people really truly are creative geniuses, every one of us in some way, and that that genius is often just below the surface, waiting to be called forth to come out and play in the sandbox of creativity.
Come out, come out, wherever you are…come play in the sandbox of Your creative genius. Heartfelt, profound thanks to all who have allowed me to play in their sandbox with them…and to all those to come.
George Copsey is a personal professional Success coach and a certified Image Streaming trainer. He trains others in Image Streaming through workshops and- with people from all over the world- by phone. He specializes in coaching creative people to take action on their Dreams- to get & stay in the Flow of their Work and lives- for profit, fulfillment & balance. Get started taking action to create the Life you really want….contact him at GeoNelson@aol.com to arrange for a complimentary (FREE) coaching session.
© Copyright 1998
George Copsey
Knowledge, Facts, and the Ghost of Socrates
by Matthew Turco
Webmaster of Anakin’s Brain.
Tonight’s main event – Tabla Rasa versus Socrates
A grudge match, 15 rounds, the future of education is at stake
In this corner, weighing in with “2500 year old script and a few dead philosophers” is the Socratic method – it states that all knowledge is within and must be drawn forth
In this corner, weighing in with “just about every 20th century institution of learning” is Tabla Rasa – it states that the mind is a blank slate and we must fill it
How do we know what we know when we know it? One of the first guys to answer this question was Socrates. He hypothesized that all knowledge was somewhere within every one of us and by engaging in stimulating dialogue (or polylogue), we can elicit all there is to know. To support this claim, he would gather crowds of young men wearing stylish togas and create lively, accelerated learning environments like the world had never seen. His genius enabled ancient Greece to reach a potential that far exceeding any other region of its time (and many more since).
And so it went for decades, and then centuries. Learning was an active, involved process that allowed both the student and the teacher to grow and reach new heights of understanding and synthesis.
“I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates who said ‘I drank what?’”
— Val Kilmer in Real Genius
Towards the end of the 19th century, as the Industrial Revolution pervaded civilization, education started to become accessible to the masses through public schooling. Until then, education was mostly private, tutorial, and offered primarily to the privileged. When industry created a demand for a more educated populace, a new era of education was born.
But there was a price. Something drastic changed in the way students were taught.
Education became less about learning and more about memorizing and reciting names, dates, and rules. The age of science brought about new scientific languages, theorems, laws and models that were “taught” rather than continually discovered. Teaching became didactic–where the teacher would present a bunch of information for the students to regurgitate on a test.
In computer lingo, there’s a popular acronym – GIGO. It stands for Garbage In, Garbage Out. A computer is infinitely stupid. It doesn’t know what you want, it only knows what you tell it to do. It doesn’t interpret. It doesn’t think. It just spits out exactly what you tell it to spit out-regardless of our actual desires.
Our educational system has created masses of unthinking drones that have been trained to regurgitate irrelevant facts. Is it any wonder that computers are replacing so many jobs? Computer were supposed to be tools, not workers.
So why was the Socratic method abandoned in the first place? Why didn’t it just transfer over to public schools?
A big part of the reason was standardization. In the industrial world, unknowns and uncertainties are liabilities. Since the Socratic method usually requires an open, informal dialogue, it is more difficult to measure each step of the sequence. Thus, it was considered only suitable for small groups of students studying the liberal arts, not the large classrooms of students learning the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic.
For a while now, Win Wenger has been making a case for the return to a Socratic style of teaching and learning. His argument is most powerfully represented in his book Beyond Teaching and Learning. But in order for his ideas to be accepted on a greater scale, we have to redefine the Socratic method and make a few important distinctions.
It was the ancient Greeks who coined the phrase educate. It means to draw forth. However, I have serious doubts that the Pythagorean Theorem was somewhere lurking in my unconscious before it was presented to me in Geometry class. The same goes with all those historical names and dates, obscure rules of grammar, and the dozens of other kinds of information I learned in school.
So it seems that didactic teachers are correct-that all mind are a blank slate waiting to be filled. Well, not exactly.
What did Socrates mean when he used the word knowledge?
One key distinction that shed light on this issue is one brought up in our all-too-brief philosophy presentation at Double Festival Six by Kevin Kraus. That is that knowledge and facts are not the same.
Columbus sailing the Atlantic Ocean in 1492 is a fact.
Knowledge is what allows us to understand what that sentence means.
Let me explain:
Everything that you know is represented metaphorically by your unconscious. Every phrase and every word has absolutely no meaning of its own. It only has the meaning that you attach to it. And on a deeper level, that means that everything you know is somehow represented in images, sounds, and feelings-the fundamental language of the brain.
When a didactic teacher argues that the Pythagorean Theorem is NOT already within us and ready to be “drawn forth”, he’s right. We’re not born with a2 + b2 = c2 somewhere lurking in our unconscious. But as we encode our entire lives as sensory experience, we build a metaphorical library of patterns that is “drawn forth” in useful ways so that we may make greater sense of the world around us. The equation is simply a means of universally representing and communicating the relationship of sides of a triangle.
The equation by itself is a fact. But the understanding of what that equation means is knowledge.
So what’s more useful-facts or knowledge? As Win Wenger states in several of his books, discovery and innovation doesn’t come from regurgitation of “facts”. They come from challenging facts and seeking a greater level of meaning in what those “facts” represent. He further states that innovation doesn’t happen on an abstract, intellectual level, although it often appears that way because that is how it is communicated. True innovation happens on a deep, metaphorical level-the level elicited via image streaming.
So who will win the grudge match? Socrates or Table Rasa? While I don’t claim to be able to tell the future, the smart money is on the second coming of Socrates. The 21st century will demand it.
© Copyright 1998 Matthew Turco
Individuality Not Merely for the Sake of Individuality
by Win Wenger, Ph.D.
Since its beginnings, Project Renaissance has sought to encourage people to turn more to their own, first-hand experience and awarenesses, depending less on second-hand information and less upon “what everyone knows.” This encouragement of individual, first-hand perception and perspective is not merely for the sake of individuality. It is essential to everything Project Renaissance is about.
- The biological definition of intelligence: the range of factors, internal and external, which an organism (or species) can take into account in pursuit of its wants and needs. That necessarily means that the more intelligent a group of people are, the more they will have responded to and developed according to differing factors, and the more different they will be from one-another. For example, a group of homogeneously grouped gifted children will differ from each other far more than they differ from the norm or average! (One of the many basic factors most gifted-ed “experts” have failed to address!)
- Our work has encountered over the years many remarkable phenomena which, if given appropriate examination and attention, will require considerable working of our descriptive natural and behavioral laws and professional practices. If more people would look for themselves and pay attention to their own first-hand perceptions, moving science forward would not be nearly so difficult.
- In Lewis M. Terman’s encyclopedia from Stanford University, Genetic Studies of Genius, featured writer Catherine Grant observed that nearly all of culture and civilization originated from a tiny handful of original observers. The rest of us merely carried out the instructions of those culture giants in building our civilization. Until now, at least, only the tiniest few such original observers have been alive in any age. What can be achieved if, now, many more of us become such original observers?
- The main natural law of psychology is the Law of Effect (“you get more of what you reinforce”)…
To draw more directly upon any sector of your huge stockpiles of undeveloped potential: focus upon the most appropriate of your many sidebands of (marginal) awareness. By paying attention to and responding to these subtler perceptions, you- (A) reinforce those particular perceptions to consciously understand and perceive much more;
- (B) reinforce those regions of your brain wherein those subtler awarenesses emerge, more and more onto line with your immediate everyday useful verbal focussed consciousness.
–In other words: where 101 other programs of creative problem-solving method and accelerated learning method seek to bring unconscious information CONTENTS conscious: Project Renaissance goes beyond this to also bring extended regions of the brain itself more and more online to enrich your everyday life and useful intelligence.
- In attempting to solve problems and difficulties, it seems natural to seek to resolve them based upon review of what we know about the problem situation. Trouble is, that the problems which resolve that way already have! The problems and difficulties left to us are the ones which do NOT solve that way. There, what we “know” has BECOME the problem by standing between us and the fresh perceptions needed wherein to find good answer. The dozen major and many minor programs of creative problem solving which are now in professional use around the world, may conceptualize the matter in other terms. –But those programs are successful precisely to the degree that they somehow move us beyond what we (think we) “know” the problem situation, and into the fresh perceptions of it wherein we can find our best answer!
(This issue is rendered more acute by the phenomenon of “neuronal habituation,” the tendency of brains, brain circuits and brain cells to go to sleep on a constant signal and wake up on a changing signal. By repeatedly mulling over what we (think we) “know” on a problem situation instead of turning first-hand perception on it, we put most of our intelligence literally to sleep in the context of that problem!)
Again, our success and forward progress are a matter of leaving behind some of our second-hand information and the assumptions which go with it, and turning directly to our own immediate first-hand perceptions.
- If we look at the work of such diverse groundbreakers as Maria Montessori, as Santiago Ramon y Cajal (the father of neuroanatomy), Omar Khayyam Moore (father of “clarifying responsive environments” and creator of the “Edison Talking Typewriter” which successfully taught 2-year-olds to read, write and type, simply by selective reinforcement of their responses), and more recently Marion Diamond who demonstrated that “enriched-environment rats” who didn’t get to actually play with the toys, only watch others doing so, ended with shriveled brains as impoverished as those of rats raised in deprivation… What these and others showed is that learning, and even the raw physical development of the brain itself, is a function not of stimulus and information put IN, but of feedback upon the individual’s own expressive behaviors. The individual’s own first-hand perceptions are doubly involved–first in terms of what the individual pays attention to coming in and how he sorts that out and expresses it; second, how he perceives the feedback – i.e., reinforcement – coming back in upon what he expresses.
>From this context we’ve determined that a large part of the human mind itself is formed from one’s history of living with the feedbacks/reinforcements/consequences of his own choices and expressive behaviors. –Almost as large a part of that mind as is formed by the emergence of formal language, which focuses consciousness and so is such a very useful tool for us in reinforcing onto line large sectors of hitherto undeveloped human ability and potential. The simple activity of Image Streaming (whose instructions are openly and freely posted at http://www.exploreit.net and in two different featured quickbooks online at http://www.anakin.com), has been tested in a series of measurement studies running since 1989 in the physics department of Southwest State University in Marshall, Minnesota. Those studies, authored by physics Prof. Charles P. Reinert (a summary of which is also posted at Anakin’s Brain), show that 25 easy, entertaining hours of Image Streaming practice, results in substantial “I.Q.” gain plus more significant apparent gains in the unmeasured, more numinous qualities of intelligence and experience.
* Not one person out of thousands trained has been unable to learn and practice Image Streaming. If anyone is ever discovered who cannot, the same effects can be gained by similarly working with other marginal areas of his or her perception. Thus, there is not a human being alive whose intelligence cannot be rapidly and easily improved by one or more standard deviations!
Some institutions find it inconvenient that human intelligence and capability can be so rapidly, profoundly and easily improved. For announced reasons of economy, Southwest State next year is closing down its entire physics department, including its very best-attended classes. Elsewhere, elements in more than twenty other universities have moved to end or prevent similar studies.
–But in these days of the Internet, more democratizing, equalitizing and informative than even Gutenberg’s rediscovery of printing proved to be, breakthroughs this significant can no longer be squelched. We will soon – perhaps by the time you are reading this – have posted freely on the web, various experimental protocols and designs by means of which you or anyone can undertake your own first-hand study of these effects. Besides the Image Streaming instructions now posted so freely for you, we will soon also be posting freely for you two already-published group scripts wherein you can easily train hundreds at a time, if need be, how to Image Stream. –Within an hour or so, no special or expensive equipment needed. –Zero failure rate. No lack of experimental material to do your studies on.
To know when and where these essential chunks of relevant information are going up, every few days review the remarkable contents of the following cluster of world wide web sites: http://www.exploreit.net, http://www.anakin.com, http://www.botree.com, http://www.winwenger.com, http://www.come.to/mindwright/, and http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/1498/
–That’s just with Image Streaming, one of hundreds of brain-integrating and brain-building techniques featured in the work of Project Renaissance. One more issue also to consider in the matter of giving more attention, response and reinforcement to your own, first-hand awarenesses instead of second-hand “knowledge” and assumptions:
- You “own,” you own rights to, every local, national and world problem which bears upon your own well-being and that of your posterity. The more important one of these is, the more that the people and “experts” handling it have come to depend upon “what everyone knows” about it, instead of going back to first-hand perceptions. You have every right and, indeed, every obligation to intervene. (Developments relating to health and longevity may result in your being around for a lot more of the consequences of your own actions and inactions than you had figured on!)
Image streaming and our hundreds of other practices for orienting on true first hand perception, give you the apparent solutions for many apparent “unsolvable” problems and issues. Whether you yourself intervene in one or another or various of these: what this means is, –That the more people become equipped with Image Streaming and various of these other perception-building practices: whether you do so or not, more and more likely does it become that SOME of that heightened problem-solving ability will be turned by SOME of our augmented number on various of these problems of common or general concern. –So that even if world problems have you too buffaloed to even want to think about touching them, if you can help others into Image Streaming and first-hand perception-building practices, more and more of those problems are going to disappear leaving yours a better world to live in. Don’t take our word for any of this, or anyone else’s word either. Make your own investigation, explore the tools made so freely available to you, see what practice of Image Streaming and related resources does for you both in immediate practical terms and for the more meaningful long haul.
— and enjoy!
- Lastly, “the acid test…” A lot has been said elsewhere about tolerating or even rejoicing in our differences. In view of the above biological definition of intelligence, any program which builds or seeks to build intelligence had best truly celebrate such differences, including differences within its own ranks. In that regard, One of our very most fundamental tenets is the use of out-loud describing on our marginal perceptions such as in Image Streaming, TO a live listener or at least to the potential listener represented by a tape recorder. Generally, nothing less will do to build both sides of the feedback loop, the fact of the listener eliciting a higher quality performance from us in the describing and also, on the other side of the loop, changing also the way we are receiving feedback even from our own voice and tones and what we are saying. This seems essential for getting psychology’s Law of Effect to work for us in refining and building our perceptions and bringing relevant parts of our brain more on line. We’ve had to go to great lengths to emphasize this point, because so many people are so reticent to talk about their own perceptions that they try to make headway by talking aloud without either listener or recorder, or even just “talking silently inside their head.” Thus at first blush, it could seem to be a major deep heresy for one of our people to develop instructions for and talk about “silent image streaming.” That seems a contradiction in terms. But Mr. Rick Ashby makes a pretty good case and for some, his procedures might make a more accessible initial path in to their resources even though ultimately they would need to go over to the “real” Image Streaming. So: Mr.Ashby’s http://www.come.to/mindwright has been added to our tight inner cluster of innerlinked websites central to what we are doing, and you are encouraged to inspect the ingenuity of his work. We expect, indeed hope, that many such profound differences will emerge in our work in years to come: that will mean that our learning in these crucial matters is continuing to accelerate.