Last week (in the feeling-good
procedures), we gave you a variation on a traditional method of
discovering solutions. That method works some of the time. Here
today is a much faster way to discover your best answer on just
about anything, and it works nearly every time.
Things you know from earlier rounds of
this column, and from elsewhere:
Thinking in images draws upon and
involves a lot more of the brain than does thinking in words,
which is largely limited to the left temporal lobe. Thinking in
images was our original - and is still our strongest - modality
for thinking, from birth on. It didn't disappear when parents and
teachers told us to stop daydreaming, sit straight, pay attention,
don't gaze out that window when I'm talking to you, etc. It only
went "underground" and is still there - easily tapped by many of
us, there but with a little digging for some of us. We haven't
found anyone yet in whom this resource was not and in whom access
could not be re-established.
Visual thinking a la Einstein, Tesla,
the dreaming Kekule (the benzene ring, basis of all organic
chemistry), the nightmare-struck Howe (the cannibals attacking in
his dream had holes in the heads of their spears, the answer to
his problem for inventing the sewing machine), is not the only
type of method powerfully associated with ingenious creative and
intellectual or artistic achievement. The Socratic method is one.
It originated in the schools of classical Greece. (These were
founded not to benefit students but to provide audiences to whom
the leading thinkers, by describing their own perceptions, could
further develop them....) Socratic method is associated with a
rate of production of world-class genius hundreds of thousands of
times higher than conventional teaching. It produces its miracles
by getting people to examine their perceptions and to describe in
detail what they discover there. This method is also closely - and
causally - associated with historic traditions of high
intellectual achievement.
Put these two effective mind-use systems
together, each of them closely linked to historical traditions of
profoundly high mental or intellectual achievement, and you get
methods like the following "Over-the-Wall" procedure.
Another key, as we go into that
procedure, is of the nature of problem-solving itself. It seems
natural when facing an unanswered question or problem to review what
we know about the problem situation and to seek its answer in terms
of what we know. Alas, the problems which are left around us are the
ones which were NOT (and will not) be solved that way. What we
"know" has BECOME the problem by standing between us and fresh
perceptions. Of thousands of creative techniques and a dozen major
systems of such techniques now in professional use around the
planet, each succeeds precisely to the extent that it somehow moves
us BEYOND what we think we know about the problem, and into fresh
perceptions on it.
Seems like all we have to do, then, is to
put aside what we know and start examining again our actual
perceptions in the problem context. Alas, within seconds, nearly all
of us seem to find ourselves back in rehashing what we think we know
about the problem. So, we've used types of visual thinking which
leave behind our "knowledge" about the problem. These approaches
look at the problem in imagistic or other special ways designed to
get us around what our left temporal lobe EXPECTS, so we can SEE the
answer. The "Over-the-Wall" technique below takes us beyond that
left-temporal-lobe-expectant mind-set and into fresh perceptions
and insights.
WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU
HARDCOPY THIS FILE SO YOU CAN USE THIS POWERFUL PROCEDURE MORE THAN
ONCE.
1. You MUST have
either a live listener to describe and develop your perceptions to
(and who can cue you to the next step in the process if need be so
you can focus more completely on the experience), or at least a
tape recorder (a cheap one or even an old dictaphone will do) and
blank tape to record onto, representing at least a POTENTIAL
listener.
2. Arrange your
surroundings - including phone, secretaries, children, whatever -
so you won't be interrupted for at least 30-40 minutes barring
some real emergency. Later uses of this "Over-the-Wall" procedure
will be quicker and quicker. With practice you will find ingenious
answers to almost any problem or question in less than two
minutes!
3. Decide upon and
write out your question. Choose an issue or problem or topic you
would truly desire to have good answer to - that desire or need
helps involve more of your mental resources. The more difficult or
seemingly impossible-to-solve the problem seems, the better for
our purposes here. Your chances are good, even this first time and
certainly in subsequent rounds, that you will discover a great and
ingenious, retrospectively obvious, answer. If that is a matter
which has baffled the experts, YOUR discovering an answer to it
can be very empowering.
Once you’ve met these three conditions
you can begin "Over-the-Wall". The steps are in a form which can be
read aloud to members of a group. If working with a live person OR
with a group: the instructions to be read aloud to your
answer-seeking partner are in brackets. After the group form is a
much briefer version for when working alone.
The Step-By-Step Procedure for
"Over-The-Wall"
Listener (or tape recorder) at the ready?
Your selected question or problem issue written down?
Excellent. Here are the step-by-step
instructions for the rest of the "Over-the-Wall" procedure...
1. With your question
established, simply set it aside and don't give it more conscious
thought for a while. For a while, no longer confront the question
directly. Instead, give your more sensitive resources the
opportunity to set up a space where the answer to that question
will be on display for you. To screen that answer space from
interference by what you "know" about the problem in your
conscious mind, imagine that this answer space is screened from
your view by a great wall. --A wall you can't "see" past until you
are beyond it yourself. With your eyes closed to see more freely,
imagine that wall to be screening from sight your Answer Space on
its far side while on this side, the nearer side, of that wall you
are in a very beautiful garden, a garden extraordinarily lovely
but very different from any you've ever seen before. Beyond that
wall, without further concern or effort from your conscious mind,
is now being set for you on display the best answer to that
question you decided to address some moments ago. Over here, on
this side of that screening wall, be in this exquisitely beautiful
garden....
2. {With your eyes
kept closed without interruption, imagine being in the midst of
this strangely beautiful garden. It might help to pretend that you
are a radio reporter, setting background just before an expected
event, "painting word pictures" of this garden for your listening
radio audience. Starting with what is directly in front of you,
there in that garden, and then all around, describe this garden in
richly textured detail to your listening audience. Make your
listener see and feel and smell and taste and experience the utter
reality of your garden, through the rich textures of your
describing--(5-10 minutes of rapid continuous description)}
3. {Now go up to this
side of the wall and describe the wall the same way that you've
been describing the garden. Don't sneak a peek yet at what is on
the other side of that wall. But put your hand on the wall and
study the feel of it, lean your face up against it, make the feel
and smell of the wall real to your listeners as well as its
appearance....}
{(In all this description, notice when
and if you get visual mental images in your mind's eye, like in a
dream. If you see them, switch to describing THEM even if they go
off into things other than garden and wall and answer space,
because they can be a more direct route to what your more
sensitive faculties want to show you.)}
4. {Don't sneak a
peek yet, at the answer on display on the other side of the wall.
SUDDENNESS is the key here, to catching your answer in view BEFORE
your conscious "knowledge" about the question can jump in and say,
"no, that can't be it, so the answer has to look like thus and
so." The trick is to experience "jumping over the wall" so
suddenly that you catch even yourself by surprise, to catch by
surprise what's there now on the far side of the wall and you are
yourself surprised by what you find there. Whatever is your very
first impression of what's on the far side of the wall after
you've jumped, when THAT time comes describe THAT. Continue
describing AS IF you were still looking at it, even if it were
just a glimpse or a momentary impression, and more of that
impression will come. Sooner or later, you will discover enough of
it through describing it that you will learn HOW what is here in
this answer space is an effective answer to your problem.}
(That suddenness can be supplied by
your live listener - "jump NOW!" - after you've described the
garden side of the wall for a while. Or, use anything happening in
your auditory environment, perhaps out on the street with a car
horn or dog bark, to abruptly jump over the wall even if you
weren't ready to yet, in order to get that needed suddenness.)
{(To the extent that what you find
beyond the wall in the answer space SURPRISES you; the degree to
which what you find over there is different from what you
expected; is an indicator of your getting fresh input from your
more sensitive faculties instead of simply recycling what you
already "know" in your louder, conscious mind. Describe that very
FIRST impression even if it seems unrelated or trivial at first --
describing this first impression regardless of what it is and
whether it's a picture or just some sort of conceptual impression.
The ACT of describing this first impression opens up on your
ingenious and unexpected good answer.)}
5. {Continuing to
explore and describe what you've found here in the Answer Space:
is there some feature which especially attracts your attention? Is
there some oddity which doesn't fit with the rest of the scene
(often the subtler faculties' way of underscoring the key to the
message)? Detail that further; or select some particular feature
here, such as a bush, tree, or side of a house, and ask it
mentally, "Why are YOU here, in this context? How do YOU relate to
this answer?" In what ways does your picture or impression change,
in response to your question? Detail these.}
(If by now you already fully
understand the answer that has been shown you, skip on to Step # 7
below. If you do not yet understand that answer or understand it
fully, go instead to Step # 6, next.)
6. {Mentally thank
your subtler faculties for showing you the answer to your
question--but ask their help in UNDERSTANDING it. Find some object
in your Answer-Space which can serve as a screen, just as your
garden wall did earlier. This can be the wall of a house, a
thicket, an as-yet closed door, a curtain, a bend in a hallway, a
cover to a photo album, a hillside, anything which fits the
purpose of being a screen, behind which you "can't" see, until you
suddenly go across into the space beyond it. Without sneaking a
peek yet at what's beyond, go up to and lay your hand on whatever
that screening object is, and ask your subtler faculties to show
you, on its far side, exactly the SAME answer to the SAME question
as before, but this time in an entirely DIFFERENT SCENE. In
effect: you are creating a second answer-space, with an entirely
different scene in it. What is the SAME between old and new
pictures, when everything else is different, by inductive
inference gives you the key to the "message" or answer! So: first
detail out the new scene after going into it, then search for
what's the same between the old and new pictures - perhaps it is
grass, perhaps the color blue, perhaps water, perhaps people
running or perhaps no one there, or triangular-shaped objects,
perhaps a certain feeling to both pictures.....}
7. {Return to here
and now fully refreshed. If you've been working with a live
listener, now grab up your tape recorder, or a notepad and pen. If
you've been working with a tape recorder, now is the time for your
notepad and pen.... some different medium from what you were using
for the original experience....}
8. Like an astronaut
returning from a mission to some far world, DE-BRIEF. Describe in
detail, to that different medium from the one you've just been
using, a little of your garden experience, but every detail you
can from when you jumped over the wall. This further,
retrospective, describing is often the stage at which
understandings and meanings click into place. Also: if you did the
original experience with eyes closed, debrief with them open; if
for some reason you did the original experience with eyes open,
debrief with them closed. To make relation-building effects within
your brain a little more immediate, try to use the present tense
grammatically while describing and stay in that present tense
mode, even though the experience is already in your recent past -
e.g., "I AM looking at all this ripe wheat bending in the wind,"
not "I WAS looking...."
Short Form for "Over-the-Wall:"
In order that you don't have to keep
looking over at the instructions to see what comes next, and in
order to let your eyes stay uninterruptedly closed during the
experience and free to deal fully with the subtler reaches of that
experience....
--Here is the short form, with a memory
device to help you remember each step and the step which comes
next--
Describe, describe, describe in richly
textured detail--
1. The Garden;
2. The Wall; and
after your sudden jump over it,
3. The Answer-Space
beyond that wall.
G.W.A.S. ("gaWAS") - easily remembered
word of initials to help you remember Garden, Wall, and the
Answer-Space beyond it. Continuing from "gaWAS" -
4. Question some
particular Aspect or feature in your Answer-Space
(QA)
5. New Scene - same
answer to same question, but shown differently
(NS) so this part of the mnemonic is
QANS; your total mnemonic is "gaWAS-qans," easy to hold in the
back of your mind so each part of it in turn will remind you of
the next step in the procedure. --Until the procedure becomes
familiar enough to you that you no longer need any special devices
to find your way with.
Getting The Meaning From Your
Displayed Answers:
For inventions, technical or mechanical
problems and art, these "over-the-wall" answers are usually quite
literal. For most other issues, perhaps because of the sensory
language in which the more sensitive regions of your brain work, the
answer may be shown in some sort of metaphor - a cartoon, a parable,
a pun or simile, in which case relating these sometimes takes effort
to figure out consciously. The most important thing in figuring your
answer out is: to not try to figure it out until after you've let
the whole experience unfold, and you've described it out in detail.
Always go for the sensory data first, figure it out AFTERward. If
your a-HA! hits you in mid-stream, well and good - and that will
happen more and more frequently as this process and set of skills
become familiar to you. But going for meanings before you've fully
detailed your experience, invites your conscious knowledge about the
problem situation to come back in, interfering with your more
sensitive internal data because it "knows" what the answer "ought"
to be, stopping you short of seeing what the answer IS.
Once your experience is fully described
and recorded, though, your "data out there on the table," so to
speak, the conscious search for meaning can no longer hide or
distort it. Here are several ways to improve your chances of finding
the meaning of what you found over the wall (or the meaning of your
dreams, for that matter)--
1. The more richly
textured the detail in which you describe, the better your chances
of discovering the meaning.
2. The more rapidly
you describe, the better the chances of outrunning your internal
editor and getting to the most meaningful part of the experience.
3. The more different
senses you engage in the experience by noticing and
describing--sight, touch, smell, movement, space and pressure,
mass, temperature, texture, taste, atmospheric feel, etc.--the
better your contact with your more sensitive faculties and the
better your chances to discover the meaning.
4. After initially
orienting to the scene: the more you experience moving around in
or doing various things to what you find in the Answer Space, and
observe and describe the results, the better your chances of
discovering the meaning.
5. Question other
objects or features in the experience, asking "why are YOU here in
this experience, what role do YOU play in this answer - then
observe and describe how the scene changes or what else happens in
response (we call this procedure "Feature-Questioning"). Likewise,
pursue what we call the "Clarification Question," asking your
subtler faculties to help you in understanding their answer by
showing you that same answer to that same question again, but
through an entirely DIFFERENT scene (Inductive Inference again).
Usually, three different scenes displaying the same answer are
enough to let you infer the meaning from their common elements.
Follow-up questions: See also, and
describe, what changes occur in your scene or impressions when you
ask such questions as--
1. "How can I make
sure that I'm understanding the correct answer here?" (How can I
verify this answer?)
2. "What else should
I know about this situation?"
3. "How best can I
turn this answer into useful action?"
4. "What's 'Step One'
in acting on this answer?" (If there is something else you have to
do first, that is not 'Step One,' so what is 'Step One?"
Whenever in doubt about what to ask,
ask:
5. "What is the best
thing for me to ask in this context - and the best answer to
it?"
Most approaches to creative problem
solving teach that one has to invest 90% or more of his total effort
to finding the right question to ask about a situation. Yet your
subtler faculties already know what is the most cogent question to
ask about a given situation, so asking this directly lets you take
advantage of that and saves you considerable time and effort.
Special note regarding
verification
Even when some answers come through with
the seeming certainty of the Word of God, it's a human instrument
receiving them, just as subject as any other information instrument,
process or content to the Laws of Entropy. Thus, to the extent that
there are significant stakes at issue in the answers you get, even
if these interior processes do tend to be more accurate than other
information processes, it behooves you to check their validity
against other indicators, just as you would and should for
information from any other source.
Perhaps this deserves even further
comment. Politicians speak in certainties even when they have only
the vaguest clue, in order to get other people to follow their lead.
Most organized religions exhort their followers to absolute belief -
but it's interesting to note that the two greatest doubters in the
tradition of the Bible, Gideon and Thomas, were rewarded, not
punished, for having doubted.
You may remember the story of "Gideon and
his brave three hundred." One day Gideon got the word from God, we
are told, to rise up and overthrow the Mideonites who had
established sway over Israel for generations. "How can I tell,"
asked Gideon, "that it's your word, Lord, that I'm hearing and not
my own imagination or wishful thinking?"
The answer came back, to set out a sheep
fleece that night and check it in the morning. So Gideon did. In the
morning, the fleece was dry, while the grass was soaked with dew.
"Well, Lord, that's very interesting, but...."
The answer came back, to set that fleece
out again and to check the results in the morning. So he did.
According to the story, in the morning the fleece was soaking wet
with dew while the grass all around was bone dry. So he acted on the
rest of his message and was rewarded with a most extraordinary
victory....
Likewise, by the other story, if
"Doubting Thomas" hadn't put his hands in Jesus's wounds,
Christianity could not have spread nearly so rapidly nor far. For
his doubts, Thomas was rewarded with sainthood, not punished.
Thus even in Biblical tradition, the
basis of most of the established religions which are exhorting
unswerving belief, the most outstanding instances of doubt are
rewarded, not punished. All our human-instrumented information needs
to be verified, whatever its apparent source. By now, with the
bloodstained pages of history lying all about, we don't need to
continue imposing our unverified certainties on each other. Check
things out as you go.
Compare the fields of human endeavor
which have advanced in the last thousand years - notably empirical
science and technology - with those which have not, notably politics
and religion. To progress, we have to be willing to risk our beliefs
and put matters to test.
So please don't hesitate to ask your
inner processes, "How can I tell if I'm understanding the right
answer here?" or "How best can I test this to make sure it is so?"
And be alert to some opportunities to check out your answers by
other means as well, including conventionally gathered empirical and
scientific data.
Frankly -- and this reflects the central
theme and purpose of these "winsights" briefs -- over the years
easily ninety per cent or more of everything I've been taught has
been contradicted by direct observation. I suspect that a majority
of what you or anyone has been taught is likewise contrary to what
direct observation will show. Frankly, I trust what I can see for
myself far better than I trust what I've been taught or "what
everyone knows." By now, with all that has happened to and in our
country, so should you.
Once verified, though, please note: an
answer is not a solution until it is acted upon, and put into
effect!
The easiest thing for many in the
creativity field to do is settle for some easy generality as answer,
and leave matters there. Your challenge is to move beyond such easy
generality to action plans and action specifics and an immediate
Step One from among those specifics and beyond.
Whether using a garden, park, wilderness,
or perhaps one of the "running-start devices" among our "back-up
procedures" (if you didn't get mental pictures, send us your
ground-mail address with that request and we'll send them to you for
free, NO one has to go without!!!); or whether using wall, screen,
window-shade, curtains, door, thicket or other screening device to
insulate your Answer Space until it's time to suddenly go land in it
and catch your first impressions of what's there--
--Whatever the details of your preferred
or present version of this post-Einsteinian "Over-the-Wall"
discovering process:
A) Pose and write
down a significant question or problem or issue beforehand so that
the experience can show you its solution;
B) Remember during
the experience to orient on some one particular feature, ask it
why it's there in that context - watch and describe what changes
occur in the scene in answer to that;
C) Ask to be shown
another scene which shows you exactly the same answer to the same
question but in an entirely different way;
D) Remember to use
your follow-up questions to verify your answer, and to develop
specific actions. Remember that when you don't know what you
should be asking, ask what it is you should be asking, and its
best answer. Remember to ask what more you need to know about that
context.....
Getting At Your Own Einstein
Factor:
Some Ways to Get At Your Own Real
Genius:
Albert says: to practice some form of my Deep
Thought Method: Let your imagery play, examine it as closely as
possible to see what you can learn from it. We say, practice
Socratic forms of Einstein's Deep Thought Method. While observing
these free images, describe them in detail to a listener; be
surprised at what comes up for you.
Here are a few of the many additional ways to bring
up your own very real genius to enrich your life:
1) Find ways to "get on a roll," stay on a roll, get
back to being on that roll, until more falls into it.
2) Find ways to verbally describe "the
indescribable:" where you have to "reach" to convey an effect, is
your growth zone.
3) Pick up on and describe subtleties and nuance.
These arise in parts of your brain usually offline from where you
are verbally focussed, conscious. Describing subtler impressions
reinforces more and more onto line with your immediate consciousness
those subtler regions of your brain, together with their
intelligence.
4) Improve the physical health and condition of your
physical brain:
a) Improve circulation to your brain; b) Improve
nutrition to your brain; c) Improve your brain's
sub-routines.