Hello

I am struck by the barrage of incongruence that is offered as truth or the way. We all have these amazing organs called our brains why do we not use them?

Seductive logic that pulls on your neurotic structure makes you want to believe but that is just the con-artist manipulating you, through reactive stimuli and reactive nerve pulse firings.  It’s not the truth or the way.

Trust yourself, use your brain and sensory system, if it isn’t going in straight then there is probably something crooked about it.

This is tricky, because for a lie to be believable there has to be an element of truth in it.  It’s the interpretation of the meaning or the truth that is at issue.  Use of vague or heavily laden with emotion, terms and information allows someone to infer meaning without really saying what they mean.  So that they can mean something very different from the inference.  It is through this inference they can manipulate the other to agree, follow, or believe him.

This is the tricky part of language, advertisers, marketing agents, and politicians use this ambiguous aspect of language to manipulate the listener, or target audience to hear just what they want but not necessarily the whole picture.

The target audience has to be willing and responsible to use their mindfulness and whole experience of the situation to make the best decisions in purchasing, voting, and action; use their thinking, feeling, and whole sensory guidance system.

There is a fun television show called The Mentalist.  The mentalist character divulges the mechanisms in which con-artists work to identify truth and manipulation.  He is outside society in a way, so like your enemy he isn’t willing to ignore what you’re hiding – he sees it and uses it to see the other characters more clearly and fully.  In the show this is used to find the real killer or the guilty party.

Therapy is like that.  The therapist is outside another’s system such that he can see the story shared and that which is hidden, the story not shared verbally but in other unconscious ways, to get the whole picture.  He uses mannerisms, word choice, gestures, silence, intonation, and other non-verbal cues to divulge what the unconscious is trying to communicate. He is outside the other’s system, he observes and interacts in a present moment fashion in response to the client, but  his being is unimportant really; it is only the information shared by the client that matters.  Therapy isn’t an equal sharing relationship – it is a facsimile of relationship where only the needs and assumptions of the client are evaluated and addressed.

This is useful, because our habit reaction patterns keep us caught in a loop and therapy is supposed to question assumptions and turn things upside down to shift those paradigms and allow a person to really respond in the now in a mindful way so that the person can live more happily and more fully.

For years I wouldn’t tell people at cocktail parties what I did for a living – because as soon as I mentioned that I was a therapist they would stop talking as if a little afraid that I might be able to see right through them to what they were hiding.  And rightly so because therapists can do this that’s how they help.  But also wrongly so because if you are a good therapist you have the ability to manage this skill and not intrude into others’ private spaces at a cocktail party.

Politicians, and other con-artists and some religious leaders use this knowledge to manipulate you to act against your own interests.  This is powerful.

At a smaller level managers, teachers, and parents do too, in the same way that therapists do to move the employee, student, or child forward in a positive way in their development.

We need to practice responding from that whole and heart-centered place, the instinctive emotional sensory guidance system with mindfulness to act in an empowered and truly connecting, collaborative way.

The truth will set you free.  What comes with freedom is response – ability and responsibility.  In order to create what you want, you need to own it – be responsible for it – you need to know what it is, who you are, and who you are truly working with, to create it.

Seeing through the seductive logic allows you to see what the person is trying to communicate from a manipulative perspective as well as what the potential outcome of the information may be.  This allows you to increase your clarity about a situation and act with integrity.  The mindfulness and neutral evaluation of the information detaches the emotional meaning from the words so that you can determine whether you actually agree with the information and how you want to respond.

Congruent information and actions increase trust.  Incongruent actions and verbal statements decrease a sense of trust.  It’s that feeling that you are listening to a seductive argument that just feel off somehow, that you don’t trust it.  This is what Malcolm Gladwell described as a Blink response.  It’s when your brain is responding to the incongruent information or some non-verbal element that says this doesn’t feel right.  when you are using your brain in this way you trust the inner sense that something is off, your sensory guidance system that includes intuition.

In order to see through seductive logic to the truth you need to be willing to have your own sensory guidance system and mindfulness lead in your evaluation system rather than the power of the outside source providing the information.

Trust yourself, use your brain and sensory system, if it isn’t going in straight then there is probably something crooked about it.

See you tomorrow.

Beth