There is a lot of advice in books, courses, and on the internet about how to set and achieve goals, but little of it is based in the scientific study of goal pursuit.
Many times people go about pursuing a desired outcome by this method:
Naïve Model of Goal Striving
1. Commit to goal.
2. ???
3. Profit!
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In a recent blog post, I shared my observations about “Circling”–a group process similar to Encounter Group Therapy that plays a significant part in the group called Authentic World (also Authentic SF/Authentic Man Program/Authentic Women’s Experience and now Integral Center in Boulder). There was a long discussion about it on Facebook.
Many people disputed my conclusions, especially that “Ken Wilber and Integral have historically been associated with many toxic groups, authoritarian leaders, and religious cults, so this new community center [Integral Center in Boulder] seems to be making decisions consistent with past problematic associations.” Others disputed my conclusion that the purpose of Circling was to induce abreaction, claiming that the technique has evolved and no longer emphasizes abreaction (but it still occurs sometimes), and that circling in general is not aggressive.
There is a video currently on the Authentic Man Program YouTube channel that supports my conclusions, especially that of an authoritarian, dominant or aggressive communication style present in the methods of Authentic World.
In the following video posted to YouTube, Travis Decker aka Decker Cunov–president and founder of Authentic SF (also Authentic Man Program, Authentic World, Authentic Woman Experience)–has an intense conversation with a young woman called “Sandra.” This video is a sample from a $147 downloadable program teaching men how to create emotional and sexual intimacy with women called “Getting Her World.”
(Trigger Warning: themes of psychological and sexual control)
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Hackers often break systems just to see where they break. This might be for fun, or for devious ends, to help, or for some other reason like an activist cause.
For instance, a security person in an IT department might get hired specifically to try and break through their web security to get a password they shouldn’t be able to get. A different kind of hacker might break in to the same system just to see if he or she can. A third might hack the security to steal a bank account number to then transfer money out of. And a fourth hacker might take down a website in protest, as in the many protests the group Anonymous has engaged in.
Lifehacking is a buzzword that has attempted to rub off the cool mystique of hacking culture to the rest of life (online and off), but frequently refers to lame nonsense like backing up your computer hard drive, or boring lists of tips on facing your fears–neither of which involve breaking systems or testing the limits. (more…)
“Circling” is the name of a technique performed by facilitators part of a group called Authentic World (also Authentic Man Program/AMP and Authentic Women’s Experience/AWE, and now Integral Center).
Recently Authentic World has become associated with a local community center in Boulder, Colorado called Integral Center (formerly Boulder Integral/Boulder Center for Integral Living). This community center is loosely associated with Ken Wilber’s Integral philosophy and Integral Life company. The new community center is emphasizing “a renewed focus on Integral Community and Relationship” which in practice means doing a lot of this circling technique in evening meetings and weekend workshops.
I observed this circling process just one time several years ago, as facilitated by a leader of the Authentic Man Program, so some of my recollections may be inaccurate. Since I’ve written previously about not singling out individuals on this blog anymore, and since my purpose in this article is to give my observations and interpretations of the technique itself for general analysis of it’s structure, I will leave names anonymous.
The reason I’m writing this is because many people I know and like are still involved with Integral, and I’ve not yet been able to express my observations and objections to this method in any context in which they would be heard. This is particularly ironic given the purpose of the circling technique is sometimes expressed as “seeing and being seen,” but in any case, writing is a method of expressing myself that I feel it is easier for me regardless of whether I’m “seen” or not.
Mike Bundrant is an NLP trainer I’m currently learning a lot from. Here is a simple little exercise from Mike that allows you to get an experience of “this too shall pass” (or the Buddhist notion of impermanence) when in an anxious or other unpleasant state, thus decreasing its intensity significantly:
I found this to be a nice application of extending what Steve Andreas calls “scope in time” (from his Six Blind Elephants, vol 1) to get a larger perspective. One of the ways we create meaning from an event that then generates an emotional response is how we represent the experience in terms of time.
I just tried out this exercise from Mike in the video above and added another piece that worked well for me that I wanted to share. I visualized my timeline out in front of me, seeing it out there and seeing that past Duff in a movie frame having an unpleasant emotional experience over there. I made sure to zoom out far enough so that I could see the times with corresponding movies before and after when he was experiencing a more neutral or pleasant experience.
After just two examples from the past I could already get the sense of this new learning beginning to generalize. Try it out for yourself, see how it helps you get a larger perspective, and add your thoughts in the comments below (a free Intense Debate or WordPress.com account is required to post due to large volume of comment spam).
After posting my previous blog on how Scott Sonnon responded to criticism with an unusual integrity for a personal development guru, Coach Sonnon generously offered to give me a sample copy of his TACFIT Warrior exercise program in exchange for trying it out for 3 months and reviewing it here. I took him up on that offer.
It hasn’t been 3 months, but I’ve given it a fair trial for about a month, and have been thinking about this brilliant program quite extensively during that time. As a fitness product, I’d give it 4/5 stars—even though the system itself is fundamentally flawed in certain subtle and all-important ways. In fact, TACFIT Warrior provides an excellent platform for discussion about the purpose of personal development itself. Ultimately I think it’s a brilliant system, but still a tilted vessel for personal transformation.
It has now been nearly three weeks since James Arthur Ray reached the rank of level 60 cult leader after his “spiritual warrior” sweat lodge ceremony left three of his followers dead. McDuffee wrote two excellent posts following the incident, him and Theo have since gone on to face Ray personally at his event in Denver a few weeks ago, and was quoted in the New York Times in the process. Nevertheless these events have brought to the forefront the potential damaging consequences of the super-star personal development guru all over again. This incident has caused many people to think about the persuasive processes utilized and technologies of the self that James Arthur Ray and other guru’s have so consistently offered to the masses.
There are a wide variety of assumptions that come into play when individuals find themselves involved in personal development. They must trust that the guru knows what they are talking about, that they have their best intentions at heart, aren’t going to walk off the stage after five minutes of talking and so on. However, the most pivotal and important assumption is the belief that understanding how technologies of the self-function translates directly into the ability to effectively use them in the world. This is where I split from most of the personal development paradigm. I think that technologies of the self must be synthesized by the self in a subjective manner. (more…)