This is Vol. 4 of the archives of Capital Ideasmiths, Project Renaissance's former e-zine. Please note that because these are archives, many external links contained herein may no longer work.
Home | Capital Ideasmiths Vol. 1 | Vol. 2 | Vol. 3 | Vol. 4 | Vol. 5 | Vol. 6 | Bottom | |
More trainers needed to spread the benefits of Image Streaming, of Einsteinian Discovery Technique, of Project Renaissance forms of Creative Problem-Solving and of truly accelerated-learning-with-understanding. See postings in http://www.winwenger.com More Winsight articles are up now at "BeyondHuman.com"
(formerly "Hot Rod Your Head!") (http://www.beyondhuman.com): Mike Cole's website at http://www.exploreit.net has been redesigned and some new additions have taken place. A new online registration form and info provider for Double Festival 8, Project
Renaissances *superb* worldwide interactive conference, is up at: Find out what Image Streaming is and how to do it at: Wonderful gifts, seasonal and otherwise, for those whom
you care about: the introductory The Einstein Factor, and the great
new Discovering The Obvious, Win's newest and the one he's been
working his way up to through all 48 of his previous published books. See http://www.winwenger.com
or visit your nearest good bookstore.
Let's Get it Together and Get Together
Creating More Intelligence, by Whatever Definition by Win Wenger, Ph.D.
by Terry Lane Among Amazon.com readers' reviews of The Einstein Factor, one reader correctly identified The Einstein Factor's oriental flavor. Furthermore, one can associate it with Native American practices. As a white who has trod the latter path, encountering some of the genius of Indianismo, I recognize effects and techniques in The Einstein Factor, which parallel those I shared through lineages of a Southwest shaman as well as a Lakota teacher. Perhaps allowing genius to occur in our lives involves recognizing that others before us have owned more of the truth than we are willing to acknowledge. Generally, the others have been the ones the West has most wanted to control or destroy, using Christianity in tandem with conquest to eliminate such genius wherever it existed, driving its development underground. For, true genius cannot be bought or sold but is derived, in Brooke Medicine Eagle's words, from a "gentle technology" far from that depicted in Hollywood's The Matrix or Stargate. As a high school English teacher I cringe when a student says, as one did last week, that fortune telling is of the Devil. Always, the best art and artists have delved into the otherworld. In Gilgamesh, the first known heroic epic of a journey to the underworld, Gilgamesh becomes the hero by facing the monsters of the deep and is returned to ordinary reality by a ferryman not unlike the Celtic Barinthus. Ninsun, the goddess mother of Gilgamesh, creates for her son a brother named Enkidu. He is the hairy, uncivilized beast whom we may loosely term "The Devil." Ninsun tells Gilgamesh that Enkidu is his "prod and goad." Dante must turn to Virgil, a pagan guide, to arrive at the gates of paradise. We marvel that Dante wasn't burned as a heretic, but the Paradiso was discovered after his death. Goethe's God in the second prelude to Faust almost chuckles over Mephistopheles' role in developing God's relationship with humankind. More recently, the young Hemingway, writing The Sun Also Rises in this ancient tradition, loses Robert Cohn much as Enkidu, Virgil, and Mephistopheles disappear. When Cohn leaves the company of travelers, it's because he isn't yet worthy of the adventure, represented by Pamplona and slaying the bull--one of Gilgamesh's tasks. Though products of different periods, each of these literary works shows us what it means to be goaded into embarking upon the stream of the otherworld journey to learn its lessons. A number of years ago, I began meditating, following the instruction of a local Comanche medicine woman. Though I was not particularly good at it, I made a twenty-one day effort as prescribed and then stopped. Something had changed, though, and as I relaxed after reading one evening, a mandala dropped in piece by piece until the series of pictures formed the Hopi sun sign with a white feather on top. Though I didn't know it, this was the beginning of a seven-year adventure which, in addition to my regular life of teaching and caring for an ailing parent, would, through its counterpoint to daily life, peel away layers of the western cultural onion. To make a long story short, I was led to a shaman who encouraged me to go to his camp in Colorado. The trip in my Camry with its 160,000 miles was daunting, especially crossing the desert at night and alone. People on their way to camp whom I met up with in Needles were disinterested in having me convoy with them, and by the time I arrived in Flagstaff all the rooms at the inns with their doors chained shut seemed taken. Eventually, I found a place to sleep. Continuing the next day, I drove through the Four Corners area, stopped briefly in Durango, and then made a wrong turn up Devil Mountain. I later learned the square chunks of rock bouncing up from the road had nearly taken out the undercarriage of my car. At the top of Devil Mountain, the road rose up as if saying, "Go back, fool." I had made up my mind to do so but thought I should find the camp and tell them I wasn't attending. Of course, after driving 12 miles back into the camp and being welcomed, I stayed. The week was difficult. I knew only two or three of the twenty plus people. Most were twenty years younger than I and never accepted me. Nevertheless, we built a woman's hut, constructed a sweat lodge, traversed a log over the small but rugged river in search of tea leaves, learned to cook mud-covered Cornish game hens in a fire pit, hunted firewood, and stayed up listening to mythic tellings followed by journeying at nightly campfires. Most importantly, we daily danced Earth Renewal and captured our power animals while Horse Dancing. However, my shift in consciousness wasn't perceptible until I passed through my first sweat lodge ceremony, a tightly packed lodge with me scrunched in the back where I faced my claustrophobia and pain from arthritic knees doubled up for over an hour. Such a crucible leads to a shift in consciousness. With two days to go after the lodge we got in cars for the first time to travel up the Ute's Spirit Horse Mountain, with the intention of approaching their sacred spring. Several Utes were along, friends of the shaman who had lived on their reservation. As we bumped slowly along over the rutted road, I saw, without really registering it, a strange flower that appeared about a foot and a half tall. Later I realized it had moved in opposition to the van's progress in a half circle, before I lost sight of it. Made of light, like Disney's holographic outdoor show, this beautiful flower created intense sadness. I felt like crying yet didn't know why. Much later I read in one of many books on metaphysics that visions accrue sadness in the viewer. Camp ended, and I drove to Los Angeles to deliver a new camp friend to her home. When we got up to go for breakfast in the morning, I pulled into a gas station for fuel. Subsequently, my Camry wouldn't start. It needed a new part that cost $300. I didn't have the money but at my friend's suggested auto repair place found the dealer would trust my post-dated check. Had the part gone out on the bumper-to-bumper Interstate the night before, the car would have stopped without warning. We had been protected all the way home, perhaps by the spirit of the bear that leaped out from roadside bushes the morning of our departure. I was too astounded to hit the brakes. She ran thirty-five miles an hour for sixty yards or so in front of the car, escaping up hill when the dirt road curved. I retain the image of individual strands of fur standing up on the bear's back as she ran. Reflection led me to read Black Elk Speaks, which I had read spottily over the years. In the weeks following the opening of school, I picked it up and began at the beginning. When Black Elk described the Herb of Understanding, a light went on. This was the flower of my vision. Its meaning is clear. We are four races blooming on planet Earth. Since Black Elk varies the colors' order, none is ascendant. Each is a jewel of light, intensely beautiful. The threat to consensual reality is obvious. If we each learn through the otherworld stream to appreciate one another's beauty, war cannot be waged as it has been. We will not perceive others as essentially different from ourselves since we are all connected to the same stream. To comprehend this fact would spell disaster for the establishment. And so "The Devil" is perpetrated upon us not as part of our whole self, our goad and prod, but as a dualism to fear. The following poem reflects upon my vision of the Herb of Understanding and Black Elk's promise that we are meant to be sacred flames, like those in Dante's Paradiso, in touch with the genius of the universe, reclaiming our divine connection through practices like those described in The Einstein Factor.
by Toni Freeman When designing a program for your employees and management, experiential exercises like the one which follows usually drive your point home and get the best results for your effort. I often use this exercise in my courses to demonstrate how we have all been inadvertently programmed to underestimate ourselves. I ask a person, let's call him Jim, to put on a belt to which are attached four long yellow ropes. I have four other people stand in each of the four corners of the room, each person holding the end of one of the yellow ropes. I blindfold Jim, and place three $10.00 bills on the floor, each bill in a different location. Jim is then instructed that his task is to find and pick up the money as fast as possible. I explain that the four people holding his yellow ropes want him to succeed. Since he is unable to see well enough on his own, they will use the ropes to guide him. Then by gently tugging on the ropes they guide Jim toward the first object. Jim gropes around the floor and finds the first bill. Then the guides tug on his ropes again, leading him to the second bill. Then the third, Success! The group applauds. Next I remove Jim's blindfold and place blindfolds on the four people holding Jim's ropes. I give Jim new instructions, telling him to pick up the three bills again. I also stress to Jim "THERE ARE NO LIMITATIONS You Can Do Anything You Want." I have performed this demonstration many times and each time the person wearing the belt reacts in the same way. They either TALK or TUG !! Why don't they ever remove the yellow ropes? The ropes are no longer guidelines, they have become limitations. They paralyze the person wearing the belt. They limit his movement and keep him from success. Yet the person does not take off the belt, he talks, telling the others to "Pull me this way. You, in the blue shirt, let loose of that rope." Or he tugs, trying to overpower those holding the ropes. In this demonstration the yellow ropes represent beliefs that were once useful to us but which have now become limitations (limiting beliefs). Keys to success using this exercise 1. After the exercise ask the group to explore what made Jim underestimate his own ability and to overestimate what he needed from others. Be sure to allow plenty of time for the group to share about the lessons they learned about themselves and the team. It amazes me how many different learning interpretations individuals have. 2. Be sure to look for behavior (interactions) that occurred between different members of the team while the exercise was in progress. An example is where one person is pulling on the rope in resistance to the leader being successful. Ask this person why they were resistant. They might answer that they didn't want to make it too easy for Jim to get the objects etc. Discuss whether they believe that success must be hard to be worthwhile. Their answer is a mirror of why they resist the team or the leader in other areas of their life. The game is almost always an indication of the underlying beliefs that we each unconsciously react to in other areas of our life. 3. Be sure to stress that how ever they participated it was ok. Make it safe for your employees to compare this game with how things are in the work environment. 4. In closing your session ask, What Are Your Yellow
Ropes? Who or what is holding
you back? Do you really need to wait any longer to make your life and your career as successful as you want it
to be? What would happen if you took off
those ropes and lived out of the possibility that you are versus the limitations that keep you tied down?
Home | Back to Contents | Vol. 1 | Vol. 2 | Vol. 3 | Vol. 4 | Vol. 5 | Vol. 6 | |