Wily Walnut's Blog

If paradigm shifting is seen to be a beneficial exercise for those who wish to evolve and be more creative, how do you do it safely? How can you explore new paradigms without getting trapped within them? Obviously if you are 100% committed to a paradigm, then you are unwilling to entertain anything outside of that paradigm. You are going to argue for the inside of the box. None of your thinking will be outside of the box.

There is plenty of room within most paradigms for profitable creative thinking. In fact, all profitable thinking occurs within somebody’s box or paradigm. Creative thinking that occurs outside of the box, outside of the current paradigm is usually too revolutionary to make money from – at least in the beginning.

First is rarely first when it comes to making money from a new idea.

Nevertheless, if you are passionate about new discoveries, innovation and enlightenment, you will want to push and stretch the envelope. You will feel an inner compulsion to break out of the box and enter the chaos zone the other side. In that realm, which Deepak Chopra refers to as the ‘field of all possibilities’, you will get whipped into confusion but may emerge with a brand new insight, understanding or concept that will revolutionize your own paradigm… and maybe the world’s too.

The 3 Anchors For Safe Paradigm Exploration
You want to explore other paradigms. Stretching your mind to different parameters seems like a good idea. You expect it to open you up and make you a more creative person. It might even give you that mercurial brain you want. But you are hesitant. You know how sticky belief systems can be. Once you are in it, it’s hard to get out again. But here are 3 anchors you can use, so you can explore and remain free.

1. Define who you are.
Define who you are currently. Denis Waitley remarks that if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. So define your current paradigm. List your values. List your strengths and weaknesses. Outline your current world view. People define themselves by the beliefs and paradigms they hold dear. You fear that you will lose yourself by exploring other paradigms, so this little exercise will act as a reminder of who you are. Just in case you get a lost along the way.

2. Create your best working paradigm.
In defining who you are, you should polish up your understanding of your current paradigm and give yourself the best working version that you can… for the purpose at hand. You are going exploring. So you want a paradigm in which you are ‘bigger’ than all that you will be exploring. You can twist that whichever way you want. But you need to have some way of maintaining the observer or witness role. Yours must be the big picture universal position – if you want to ensure that you don’t get lost in your explorations.

3. Carry your zero-the-hero explorer’s toolbox.
Indiana Jones never left home without his bullwhip and brown Fedora hat. So you should pack a toolbox too. And in that toolbox stuff stuff the 'Zero State' concept. This incorporates the idea that all paradigms require an investment of belief by you to give them life. This is like a projection in the Zero State, which is like the underlying field of all possibilities -- a blank slate if you will, on which you project your paradigm. Basically you are working with the idea that all paradigms exist within something larger and better.

In the School of Thinking, they offer a code called CVStoBVS which stands for Current View of Situation to Better View of Situation. If you remember that there is always a better view of the situation (a better paradigm) you’ll leave exit room from the paradigm you are currently exploring.

Think: “It’s just a paradigm. It’s not the Absolute Truth.”

Now you know how to explore a paradigm without getting trapped by it. You’ll probably get trapped or temporarily stuck anyway. But if you remember these tips, and remember you are an explorer of paradigms not a marketer or apostle of a particular paradigm, you will get free again. And in freedom, you’ll be more creative.

Labels: belief systems, change, paradigms

Paradigm Shifting: Creativity Through Paradigm Shifting
A paradigm is a fundamental world view. It’s how you see and understand the world you live in. A paradigm is formed from a mixture of current scientific ‘fact’, best guesses and the comfortable fictions of belief. Most people are deeply engrained with their paradigm. Changing it in even the slightest way causes deep anxiety and discomfort. Depending on the nature of the person they will adapt to the change quickly, slowly or not at all. In the latter case, they will resist the evidence of the change in paradigm.

Paradigm shifts occur when an old idea is replaced with a new idea. Ideally, paradigm shifts are evolutionary and progressive. This is not always the case. Examples of paradigm shifts include Columbus proving the world was round not flat, Gallileio introducing the concept of heliocentrism rather than geocentrism, or the people of the world coming to terms with an alien invasion in the movie, Independence Day.

Unconscious becomes conscious
Paradigm shifts can be likened to unconscious bits of information becoming conscious. Like those moments of illumination when you suddenly recognise a pattern of behaviour as emanating from some childhood event. Paradigm shifts are revolutionary. They stop you in your tracks. They surprise you because they break the skin of your accepted beliefs and comfort zones, and inject new knowledge, energy and life into your experience.

Some paradigm shifts are global. The pictures taken of the ‘Earthrise’, during the first moon walk, are said to have caused a paradigm shift in humanity’s understanding and appreciation of our shared planet.

Some paradigm shifts are personal. Like when you discover your guru is a sleaze bag or your preacher is a pervert. Your cherished beliefs are assaulted by the rude awakening. You are forced to question what you have been believing in.

If paradigm shifts cause new awareness, new understanding and ‘movement’ in your mental positioning … it’s got to be a good thing for creativity, insight and discovery.

So, we want to explore the idea of deliberate paradigm shifting.

The role of paradigm shifting
Deliberate paradigm shifting can start with your 'trying-on' of various existing paradigms. In this instance, you want to take the attitude of being an actor taking on a new role for a season on the stage, or for the duration of a movie. He or she goes into it, knowing that it is for a limited duration, and that they will emergy from it the other side. Knowing also that it is just a mantle that they assume during the play or during filming. They put it down again afterwards. However, while in the play or during filming, the actor attempts to become that character, and fill that role completely.

This is a good attitude to have when exploring paradigm shifting.

Who you are
Start by defining your own current paradigm. Make thumbnail notes on what it is you believe about ‘life, the universe and everything’. Most people define themselves by their beliefs. Your paradigm is an important reference point for defining who you are. Without it, you can feel lost, like you don’t know who you are anymore. If you take the time to define your own personal world view, you can leave it there, written down, while you explore alternatives.

The 'current paradigms' changing room
Next, look around you and explore alternative paradigms. Perhaps you can explore the paradigm of someone like Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion. And contrast that to the paradigm of Sai Baba or Pope Benedict. Compare the paradigm of Gandhi to that of someone like Carlos the Jackal.

You can explore scientific paradigms, social paradigms, racial or sexual paradigms. As you shift through paradigms, what will you discover?

What it takes to shift paradigms
Paradigm shifting takes a certain amount of courage and a great deal of awareness. You will be shaken up. You will be stretched out of your comfort zones. And this is a good thing. We are too comfortable in our definitions. Too at ease within out accepted limits. Too stubborn about what we know. We treat our paradigms like hammers and see everything else as a nail. We stoically apply what we know to every situation regardless of whether it really works or not.

Breaking up the ice
By paradigm shifting, you break up these crusted formations in your mind. Like an ice breaker, your paradigm shifts allow the water of life and creativity and insight to flow again. Paradigm shifting makes minds more flexible, fluid and adaptable. You become more creative by having the mental fluency to adopt new ideas, new insights and incorporate them into your thinking.

Paradigm Tolerance
This concept of paradigm shifting may help you develop a tolerance for the real ground-shaking paradigm shifts that may occur in your lifetime. Paradigm shifts occur on a heirarchical scale of importance. Your insight that your backache only occurs when you get scared about your finances may shake your personal paradigm… but it wouldn’t rock your world like someone inventing and making widely available an anti-gravity suit so you can fly.

Go on! Lever open your mind with deliberate paradigm shifting.

Labels: belief systems, change, paradigm shift, transformation

You’re an explorer. You’ve decided life is more than just the daily grind. You’re on a mission to find out what underlies it. Like the Scooby Doo team, you’re a mystery hunter. But not for you the spooky fairground or the haunted mansion. You’re investigating the mystery of Life itself.

You look around to see if anyone else has figured it out. Plenty claim to have worked it out. They package their ideas as beliefs. And they want you to join in and share their belief. People take comfort in having shared beliefs. The more people they can get to believe their idea also, the easier it becomes for them to believe in it totally themselves. Ideas are like that.

Beliefs are just packages of ideas orbiting around a particular theme. The theme is the big idea. The mothership idea. And it is hungry for your energy. It lives and thrives by accumulating believers to feed it with belief energy. An idea can only run and run when it has legs. Yours!

So here you are in a whole world of beliefs and paradigms. They are all jostling and fighting for your attention. You have the one thing they need to survive. Attention.

To really understand a belief, you have to experience it from the inside. But there is great danger because once you are inside a belief, it has your attention, and it doesn’t want to let it go. Beliefs are clever little things. Devious even. They are structured to make it hard for you to let the belief go. Stop believing and you’ll be an outcast, an outsider. Stop believing and you’ll be… damned! Fear is a useful weapon in sustaining beliefs and retaining people’s energy and attention.

Explorers seek to live above beliefs though. Explorers seek freedom and liberation and inifinite states of energy and understanding. Explorers seek to improve upon what is known. That is abhorrent to beliefs. A belief has to be static, fixed and limited. Only by its defintion can it have life. Beliefs are threatened by evolution. Some beliefs even ban the concept!

But there are some benefits to beliefs. And we explorers don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater do we? What’s the point of exploring anything if we don’t take what’s of value from it. (Gosh, listen to me, I would have made a great colonialist!)

We can derive comfort and confidence from certain beliefs. We can use certain beliefs to give us a mental structure (a navigational point) with which to explore this life.

Imagine if you found yourself in deep outer space, a zillion miles from Earth and everything you know. You’ve no body, just consciousness. How would you know which way was up, or down, left or right? You wouldn’t. You would have nothing to navigate by. No way of understanding or relating to where you are. You would have to start naming things, and forming a belief about where you are. It’s made up. It’s your best guess. But it gives you a basic framework to work with. And you derive some comfort from that.

It’s like when the first European settlers got to America or Australia. Everything was new and unknown to them. So they would set up a village and name it after some town that was familiar to them back in the mother country. That made them feel more secure.

So, beliefs can be useful.

But, as stated, beliefs don’t like to let go of you. Beliefs as memes want to infect other people. They want you to become converts and apostles. Beliefs need you to ‘spread the word’ and pass on the virus. Beliefs need fresh host minds to propogate in. So, beware! If you use a belief, keep your escape hatch open. Don’t lose yourself in a belief. If you do, you’ll stop being an explorer and will instead be a believer. And believers abuse beliefs by seeking to infect others (often against their will) with the belief meme.

At least, that’s my belief! ;-) .

And you’re welcome to share it! :-))

Labels: belief systems, beliefs, believers, paradigms

Creative thinking requires exposure to many ideas so you can formulate new connections. Confusion can arise when those ideas include beliefs or paradigms of ‘ultimate truth’. The degree to which you can be flexible enough to shift from paradigm to paradigm without going crazy-bonkers can be called your multiple paradigm tolerance factor.

You wear sunscreen or sunblock cream with a high Sun Protection Factor to protect you from the burning UV rays of the sun. When exploring multiple paradigms you’ll need some kind of protection too. Otherwise you’ll get mentally burned. I speak from experience.

If you are an explorer of big ideas, part of the new age, or what’s commonly called a ‘seeker’, you can probably resonate with this concept. You’ve got a bookcase full of eastern and western philosophies. You’ve got Yoga, Chi Kung, you’ve got channelled teachings, you’ve got ancient spiritual texts, you’ve got this guru, that philosopher, the success gurus spouting quantum physics, and the agnostic scientist presenting his or her grand theory of everything. You’re hungry for Truth. You’re on a path to enlightenment. But you’ve no map, no clue, and everyone else is trying to sell you on their particular meme. Couple that with the demands of daily life, your aging body, and the challenges of getting ahead in this world. You’ve got a recipe for some serious existential stress.

So how do you deal with it? First off, recognise that there will be stress from entertaining multiple paradigms or belief systems. Accept it. Leonard da Vinci talked about the creative importance of developing a tolerance for ambiguity and paradox. In the space between two conflicting beliefs, there is opportunity for innovation, insight and the new. I think of that space as a kind of chaos, like the primordial chaos out of which new worlds are born.

I think once you’ve established that the stress of paradigm shifting will occur, it becomes part of the known. You’ve outlined it, which puts you back in the big picture observer role. This gives you the tolerance factor. The confusion chaos can now occur within the space of your awareness. And becomes more bearable because you are bigger than it, and have a rationale for it.

The other way of dealing with it is the simple brain dump. Just dump everything you are exploring and get some rest. Be normal again. Wake up afresh the next day and start again. Meditate a little. This will give you insight and space. The more mental space you can create the greater will be your multiple paradigm tolerance factor.

Labels: belief systems, creative thinking, paradigms