Part 5: The Power of Abandonment

NOSC Pre-Flow Camp

NOSC stands for non-ordinary state of consciousness. This blog post was written prior to attending a flagship Flow Camp in Eden, Utah in late August 2017 focusing on leaders and trainers (reference “Stealing Fire” and “Flow Genome Project” for more recent discoveries in neuroscience and the consequences of those discoveries). This is to keep a record of my current mindset before it is altered by my experiences there.

According to the book “Stealing Fire”, there is a continuum of flow experiences, from catching a glimpse of what it’s like to be in a NOSC to - the sky’s the limit. Many people may experience a version of flow when they’re immersed in a project, creative effort, or athletic pursuit. SEALS seem to click into a hive mindset when on an engagement. The book refers to flow as having the STER properties of Selflessness, Timelessness, Effortlessness, and Richness, which allows people to perform at peak level.

As a music composer who experienced flow states, an extraordinary Philip Glass interview on flow resonated.

His theory for how to achieve creative flow is this: you’ve done the hard work to become an accomplished musician, meaning the relevant skills are imbued in your automatic memory so that you don’t have to think about them, you can focus instead on the challenging things you wish to accomplish. As you push the edges of the envelope, you begin firing on all cylinders.

Normally, as we go about our day, there is this additional observer within us offering a running commentary of what we are experiencing: “I’m cold. Yikes, I’ve been procrastinating and now that Juilliard assignment is due on Monday.” But when creativity sparks, we push the edges of the envelope and begin firing on all cylinders. The only thing the brain can focus on is the task at hand, and that observer goes away. There just isn’t enough bandwidth to handle the task and the observer.

When I pop out of a flow state and look at the final product, it feels as if I became a pen used by an unseen force to create that musical work. That’s because the observer disappeared when I was firing on all cylinders, resulting in a form of amnesia during the creation process.

The observer is our sense of self, with it’s observations, judgments, sense of time, etc. When we’re deep in the creation process, effort is being expended, but because the observer isn’t there to track it, the process feels effortless. The richness occurs because when we stop observing and being judgmental, we can focus all of our energy towards dealing with the full richness of information available to us. Hence, the STER properties.

There is another aspect on a greater scale, that ties into abandonment syndrome in a later chapter.

More family history for context, focusing on family stories pieced together on dad’s side of the family in Taiwan. I am a fifth generation real estate investor. An ancestor started an all girls school for rich families, realizing this was a way to create a match-making environment for rich families because they knew everything about the girls - their intelligence levels, social and emotional dispositions, physical health, family histories, etc.

Back then, Taiwan land ownership was organized around squatters’ rights. Our ancestor went to various squatters and offered them, say $200, in exchange for ownership of their land when they died. At the time, $200 was more than squatters would see in a lifetime so they agreed since they had both the money and their land until they died. That’s how our family accumulated an enormous amount of land in Taiwan.

Taiwan was in various states of occupation, and with the changes at one point most of the land was taken by the government, except for land out in the boondocks.

When grandfather inherited the fortune (he was the eldest son), he was able to spend his life being an artist, living off the inheritance. All of his children had nannies, including my dad. When grandfather came home with a second wife (my dad was six) and grandmother abandoned the family with only my dad to join the eldest son in Japan, dad went from being a pampered child to penniless in Japan in the middle of WWII.

They hid in a farmhouse in the hills during the war, and dad remembers his job was catching fleas every day and piercing them with a needle. Had they been caught by the Japanese they could have been executed. Then the war ended with the Allies being victorious.

The Allies put grandmother and her two sons in a hotel where they got a few complimentary beers. Since the Japanese were being treated harshly - rations of black rice - grandmother sold those beers on the black market, got money to buy more beers, and kept accumulating money. She then built businesses.

After the war, dad said he could do a 360 degree turn in the middle of Tokyo and see nothing but horizon. And yet, my grandmother was one of the first to build a house there. She had everything going against her; she was middle aged, divorced, a foreigner, and a woman, and yet through sheer will she built the equivalent of a $100 million fortune today.

She married step-grandfather, who was seven years younger than her. Her drive came with a price - she died at age 67 of overwork, and step-grandfather inherited her fortune. Years later he married a woman who was much younger than him, and only a few years after they got married, step-grandfather got into an argument with a tenant, the tenant stabbed him to death, and she inherited the fortune.

From dad’s stories, it seems he and his brother feared, admired, and respected grandmother. But instead of spending her precious time with her family, she spent her time building a fortune that ultimately went to a complete stranger.

Our family has seen massive fortunes come and go multiple times. That’s important for a number of reasons. Those who have built large fortunes generally know how to manage money, and even if they lose those fortunes, have the skills and mindset to build a fortune again. Those who inherit fortunes aren’t quite as lucky unless they do what our family did with my parents’ and our generation. My parents started their adult lives with nothing, and were responsible for their finances. Similarly, when sis and I started our lives as adults, we neither got nor asked for financial help from our parents.

What about those who are poor? That can be great motivation to make actionable decisions to escape poverty, if they are exposed to the right role models and education. Without the right information, they could be at risk of losing their fortune if they don’t learn how to manage it properly. For those who cannot escape poverty, I’m sure it is easy to think: if only I could win the lottery, my life would be perfect.

But our family essentially did the equivalent of win the lottery multiple times and learned that money alone can’t bring happiness, and in fact, can lead to a lot of misery.

Now take this discussion and apply it to every other external factor that people often equate with happiness - jobs, prestige, power, comfort, youth, love, health, knowledge, traveling to new places, new technology, entertainment, etc. I came into this world with strong intuitive skills and had an easy time with music, and have since balanced that with decades in the technology industry doing software development, technical training, engineering management, and more.

In spite of all I’ve gotten, because of the abandonment syndrome and PTSD symptoms, there was a void in me that couldn’t be filled. After landing that job teaching at Morgan Stanley in Tokyo and Hong Kong, running halfway across the planet was useless because I couldn’t run away from me.

9/11 happened. Then in December 2001, my gall bladder had to come out, and in early 2002 I was T-boned by someone in a rental car. Luckily I was going fast enough he accordioned the seat behind me on the driver side, not me. That was rock bottom - physically, mentally, emotionally.

Modern medicine offered two options: surgery and medication. I researched different healthcare modalities (therapeutic bodywork, acupuncture, chiropractic, etc.). A coworker introduced me to a group called Cassiopaea, which could be considered fringe but at the time with my background I didn’t realize this. What happened next was wild.

While reading through the material, my whole perspective of the world suddenly shifted. The physical world was still there, but it was as if superimposed on top was a whole hidden universe. It feels like a stronger version of intuition; “see” isn’t quite the right word, nor “hear” because it’s not like I hear voices. But I was suddenly getting two sets of messages, one “mundane” and another at a higher level. I tilted my head, blinked, and said oh, THERE you are. You’ve been there this whole time, haven’t you?

Throughout life many events occurred that could have gone horribly wrong, and yet somehow these catastrophes unfolded near me but never destroyed me, like I had a silver bubble of protection around me. This second universe felt connected to these silver bubble feelings I’d had.

Having no religious background, I dove into the Cassiopaea site, the bible, physics, psychology, philosophy, etc. For four months straight, I “fire hosed” almost non-stop because the amount of incoming information was overwhelming. I would cycle between euphoria when stumbling on another piece of information that triggered an influx of new data, and deep depression when new data so completely turned my world upside down it resulted in ego death. This scared both Frank and my dad, they were trying to figure out what was going on, and how to get me out of this. Frank admitted he wanted to have me committed. We’re lucky to live in modern times; throughout most of human history, people experiencing this would have been burned at the stake or thrown into an asylum.

I read the bible from cover to cover, and it felt like someone was perched on my shoulder elbowing me now and then, saying: you like that? How about that one? Wink. I would be howling my head off, laughing. A friend wrote a post on something I shared with her about the prodigal parable: http://abiding.blogspot.com/2011/05/so-man-walks-into-bar.html

Since then there have been amazing experiences. I’ve also had some experiences with the dark side of this. When I realized how deep the rabbit hole could go for those with enough curiosity and hubris, I mentally closed that door, backed away, turned, and never looked back. It never bothered me again once I made that conscious decision.

There was a lot of dark material in the Cassiopaean website, and there is a fine line between effecting ego death and insanity. Unfortunately I think that line is different for everyone and hopefully the Stealing Fire and Flow Genome people have a handle on this. Since my experience happened accidentally and there was no support (and no Burning Man community), it was pretty harrowing.

Because this is like a strong intuition, the information goes into the combinatorial explosion of possibilities and probabilities, and blends with the critical thinking and problem solving skills learned in the technology arena and from my physicist dad.

From a material sense many of us have (or have had) everything we could possibly have wanted, to a point where we were drowning in our material wealth. And still many of us felt empty. This is the type of scenario that can be a catalyst for making a shift into a NOSC. For those still searching for the grass that’s greener on the other side: “I’d be happy if I could just <fill in the blank, e.g. get that high paying job>”, this can interfere with finding the catalyst that pops you into a NOSC. Those with a tendency to be ADHD who are busy flitting from one distraction to another in life aren’t ready.

My experience in a NOSC seems more analogous to Buddhism, being tuned into an all-inclusive universe where the identity of the universe is holographic in nature, as opposed to an external God.

Take a loaf of bread, and say that’s the universe. Slice the bread - the loaf is bread, and each slice is still bread. Take a very tiny piece of a slice - that is bread as well. So there is the universe without, and the universe within.

The Stealing Fire book mentions some consequences to achieving this state of experiencing STER - Selflessness, Timelessness, Effortlessness, and Richness. Regarding selflessness, it’s not about the person experiencing a NOSC (messiah complex). It’s about giving everyone the tools and information needed to experience a NOSC for themselves.

Using the loaf of bread analogy, when Stealing Fire refers to the messiah complex (false prophet?), it would be like a tiny piece of bread thinking it’s the loaf. Here is a quote by Nisagadatta Maharaj, mentioned in Stealing Fire:

“Love says ‘I am everything.’
Wisdom says ‘I am nothing.’
Between the two, my life flows.”

Senior year at Notre Dame, after studying late at the library, I looked up at a clear sky and saw what appeared to be a small percent of Saturn’s ring that covered almost half the horizon in front of me, as if Saturn were just about to collide into the Earth. Earth suddenly felt like a grain of sand in the universe and I almost fainted. To this day that experience was a mystery.

After the NOSC and 4 months of non-stop research, things quieted down and stabilized. This was a relief to dad and Frank, but what they didn’t know until 2017 is that the NOSC never faded, and has influenced my life ever since. I went underground and waited 15 years for people to catch up. Stealing Fire was the clarion call to come out of the closet.

Feeling tethered to the universe is like having an iPhone. Sometimes that iPhone is in my back pocket, sometimes it’s out to play a game, read an e-book, check the weather or get directions. On occasion, a family member is in crisis and I'm on the horn. The different states run the gamut from being a normal human being to fire hosing non-stop, but that iPhone is always there.

There is still programming from whatever fragments of ego are left, so it’s as if there are multiple versions of me. There is the little me that cries and screams about all of the unfair things in this world, the one still living in this physical plane. The big me is connected to a grander plan that transcends this physical plane. The key is not to suppress either one, but to use the information from both to create a more integrated and richer view of the universe.

Life gets easier if I surrender and follow the flow. If I don’t follow the flow, life becomes difficult because my ego gets in the way, and I get bitch-slapped pretty quickly.

One goal has been finding and re-integrating fragments that separated due to past history or trauma. I not only hold a lot of conflicting information in my head, but cycle through and live it. Some experience would pop me into a particular mind set. I would deliberately dive in and live that mindset, talking and behaving as if I actually believed all of it (and it feels real when I’m in it). Then the universe would bend in response, yielding new information. After a long walk or sleep, my brain would integrate this new information. Then I might flip into a completely different mindset and the process starts all over again. My dad said he gave up trying to keep up with me. When he thought I was in one place, he’d talk to me again and find I was in a completely different place.

This is a form of engaging in deliberately induced multiple personality condition, except that part of me is always outside observing, knowing that the true purpose of swirling this rapidly is to gain as much real-world knowledge as possible.

When tethered to an all-inclusive universe, artificial boundaries fall somewhat to the wayside. I still have my own personal preferences and quirks, and work on my health, mind, emotions, and use NOSC to become the best version of me that I can be, brokenness and all. In fact, those who get to this state begin to see the perfection in the brokenness.

In terms of not being tied to outcomes, whatever is meant to be always happens. Thanks to a dear friend in Florida, I always ask: if I knew everything, what would it be?

So how can there be all-knowing and at the same time free will?

Here is a little fairy tale. God was alone, so God cloned itself and all hell broke loose. Abandonment at the core.

I look for things that surprise me, or things I can’t accept. I work to accept them and rework my world (physical and non-physical) to a point where I’m OK with it. This will include learning to accept that there will be things I won’t be able to accept. Because if there is a heaven and hell, heaven would be finding a way to transcend whatever is happening on the material plane as we live our day to day lives in this world. Hell would be endless confrontations with what we try to suppress, or run and hide from.

So how did we end up here on planet earth? I've always felt like some spirit who took a wrong turn at a critical signpost and ended up here. Only recently have I come to terms with this place. There is a saying: we're not humans on a spiritual journey, we're spiritual beings on a human journey. I can't think of a greater definition of hell than to be an all knowing, all seeing being. 

When I first held an iPhone in my hand, it was the most extraordinary feeling. I was looking at something that hadn't existed before, and suddenly it existed and was sitting in my hand for the first time. I knew it would change the world, and it has, both good and bad. And from 2007 to 2017, 10 short years later, here we are bored out of our gourd. Sigh. Yet another iOS update? A "new" iPhone? Woo. Hoo. Blah. Bored bored bored. 

So on the one hand when thinking of reincarnation and the fact that this may be the 40,000th time learning how to walk and hold poop Again, that sounds horrifying. But the other prospect of an ever after that never changes - equally horrifying, maybe more so. This whole business of time that only goes forward so we see the past but not the future? Aging, growing old, pain, misery, death? Horrifying. And yet, what is time? 

My physicist dad says we don't know, that time is information, and he's right. Time is everything, we would have nothing without time. Without time, we wouldn't be able to enjoy sunsets, music, fast cars and bikes or the ballet dancer who floats through the air. I once read: Chopin, Beethoven, Brahms - they didn't die. They simply became their music. The music I have written on this earth now exists, and it can never not exist again. So I don't think we came here to be mortal - we came here to learn how to become truly immortal.

A low footprint helps to stay maximally flexible. This opens the most number of doors to flow, so that it can reflect the universe as it is and not as I wish it to be.

Another friend once quoted: “God can move mountains, but bring a shovel.” In a NOSC, you become aware of that which is greater than yourself. But it is we who have the eyes, ears, hands and feet; it is we who can do the work.