A.T. Lynne

You cannot be aware and think at the same time.  Scientific research has proven that stimulus precedes thought.  Or it could be said that thought lags behind sensation or stimulus.  What is wondrous to the researchers is that thought lags behind by a full half second.  This means that your life is happening half a second before you know that it has happened!

On the other hand awareness of sensation is instantaneous.

Therefore, you either assign your attention to what is actually happening in the moment through awareness of immediate sensation, or you assign your attention to assessing and evaluating, or in some other way thinking about the sensation.

A test of this is to lift your head and look about you right now.  Say the word “red” over and over as you glance about.  Now count on your fingers up to 10, each time you see the color red, as you continue saying “red.”

Now, do the same thing while saying the word “blue.”  This time however, keep your attention on each blue object until you also say what the object is that is blue.  For example, in addition to “blue” you will say “blue sky,” “blue scissors handles,” “blue pen.”

Did you notice how much longer it took you to count the 10 blue objects you identified by name versus how much faster it was to get to 10 when you simply acknowledged the experience of the perception of the color red?

In awareness is actually where deep rest and relaxation happen.  It is also where creativity blossoms and hypnotic suggestion tranforms.

One of the precepts of Alanon is, ”Don’t precipitate a crisis nor interfere with a crisis.”  I had, heretofore, understood this admonition to mean, ”bite your tongue and let someone reap the consequences of his bad decisions.”  This is also referred to in 12-step programs as allowing another person “to reach his bottom.”

Today, an even more significant reason for keeping such crisis thoughts to yourself occurred to me.  The “crisis” that you are admonished to not perpetuate nor interfere with is, really, merely an imagined outcome your own creative mind has conjured.  Unless you are a prognosticator with proven powers of knowing the future, in other words, if you are astoundingly wealthy due to your knowing in advance which horses, teams or candidates will win and you’ve successfully put your money where you mouth is, then, just maybe, your imagined outcome is not such a sure thing.  If, in truth, you are as incapable of divining the future as the rest of us, wisdom will guide you to keep your mouth shut.

Your antsyness to warn someone of his impending misfortune proves only that you have tranced yourself into believing in this imminent and certain outcome.  Nevertheless, the “crisis” still resides only in your own mind.  And, in those moments when you are so eager to divert another’s attention with your story is the time when you are more deeply in love with your mind’s fabrication than you are with the victim of your imagined bad outcome.

Simpy because you have become enchanted with the “crisis” you envision, in no way means it is any more true a future outcome than someone else’s mental picture.  However, when you become unquestioningly invested in the “truth” of your imaginings, the temptation to trance others into believing along with you can seem irresistible.  

Yet, questioning the thoughts which barrel out of your ever active mind is really not such a hard thing to do.  Playing the “Says Who?” Game from 21 Games for The Mind that Won’t Shut the @#&* Up! makes questioning thoughts easy, illuminating and worthwhile.  As you question the value of predicting unpleasantness for others, and as you reawaken to your heart’s desire to be respectful, you will much more easily refrain from polluting others’ intentions with toxic imaginings.  Questioning your thoughts also brings the added benefit that such unpleasant predictions will be less and less inclined to take up residence in your mind, leaving space for creative imaginings which glorify, dignify and bring joy.  This is the way of genuine and mature love.

Currently, I am preparing the lessons for my October-November class, HOW TO WRITE AWARD-WINNING SHORT STORIES THAT PEOPLE LOVE AND REMEMBER.  Since I expect the class to fill up and since some people who would like to take the course live too far away, I have decided to post the lessons here, and in advance of the class.

My topics and my teaching methodologies differ distinctly from those of other instructors.  And, as valuable as these lessons will be to everyone who chooses to download the information from this website, they are much richer when experienced in a classroom setting.  So, I invite every interested writer, new or experienced, to take a look at these concepts as I present them.

Most of all, I wish for each of you the stimulus to write.  Write for fame and fortune and write for yourself — and always understand, these two, when unadulterated, are one and the same.

Look for these lesson posts beginning next week, Monday, August 24.

Also, prepare to enjoy more of my own award-winning short stories when Prime Number Press publishes my newest collection of fiction, Under a Gibbous Moon, in early 2011.  If you’ve not yet read the most recent of these, I invite you to click here or on the link at the top of this page: “Edward’s Heart” Award-Winning Short Story.

As I continue to hear from people who are re-friending their minds by playing the games in my book, my own insights continue to expand.

This time last year, a well-known editor I was interviewing to work on the book with me asked, “So who are your buyers, your readers?” I told him that, among others, I envisioned the book being read by bikers and prisoners.  He laughed and said, “Well, you can forget about ever selling any books then, because prisoners can’t afford them and bikers will just steal them.”

Maybe he’s right.

I wrote the book of games, initially, as a guide to my own mind’s ease and peace.  Then, I decided to publish the games to share their power with others who also felt caught and sought escape. These games do help people who feel they are imprisoned by circumstances beyond their control.  And for those who wish they could just climb on their imaginary Harleys and get the heck out of Dodge, the games dissolve the illusion that we must go somewhere else to reconnect with our own hearts.

In addition, then, to the games serving soldiers who must act as they are told and prisoners who are restrained from acting as they wish, these games are even more powerful for those people who are free to act at will, but whose troubling thoughts keep them from acting on their desires and in their own best interest.

As I considered the value of giving copies of 21 Games… to soldiers currently at war, I began rereading the Denma Translation of The Art of War by Sun Tzu.  Contemplating these ancient yet so currently appropriate concepts of victory in war convinced me that giving copies of 21 Games for The Mind that Won’t Shut the @#&* Up! would indeed be a gift.

More than 2,300 years ago these ideas ascribed to Sun Tsu were formulated by numerous authors to guide the military leaders of China. In the text, these ideas are addressed to “the Sage Commander.”  However, this is not a person who actually lived but a state of being that is possible for all of us to achieve.  ”If we seek the root of the Sage Commander’s power, we discover that he is simply and genuinely himself, always comfortable with who he is. The more he relaxes, the greater the power associated with him. In some people such openness may arise quite spontaneously. Or they may develop it from a strong discipline, or out of the sharp and sudden experience of seeing through the hold that fear has upon the human mind.”

The intention of 21 Games… is to be the catalyst for this seeing through the hold of fear.  These games are fast and easy, short and sweet, effective and memorable means of re-friending yourself.  They take a player beyond fear and into relaxation where calm thinking arises, where he is again comfortable with himself and where he becomes a genuine and powerful presence. Knowing that these games work well for me and are working to bring peace and new hope to others, I choose to believe that soldiers at war will find these games to be the gifts I intend.

Please read the next post for how to order a free book for any U.S. soldier in either Afghanistan or Iraq.

In May, a U.S. Army Major stationed in North Carolina bought an early-release copy of 21 Games for The Mind that Won’t Shut the @#&* Up!  A couple of weeks later, he wrote me an email saying that he would be taking the book with him on special assignment in Afghanistan.  I was profoundly moved that he would include my book with those few personal items he could take along.  And, I have thought a lot about how my games could be of special value to people doing what they can to survive in a war zone.

Before I began creating and playing these games, my life was so filled with drama, anxiety and worry that I lived as though I were in a war zone.  I battled with my thoughts, my bosses, spouses and even with my friends. I ran for cover or grabbed a weapon or attacked at the slightest disagreement or challenge.  It was truly a brutal and fear-ridden life.

Playing these games not only relieved me of the burden of incessant fear, I now can see inviting possibilities where I used to see only insurmountable problems.  Yet, it is the effective ways these games are serving other people that thrills me the most.  The book is now being read on every continent, other than Antarctica. And readers continue to tell me how playing these games is helping them restore their own peace of mind.  This is the result and reward of reading my book and playing my games that I wish for everyone.

Now, there are thousands of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who must face the real brutality and fear of war and death.  The last thing these men and women need is to be battling their minds.  This is surely a time when they cannot afford to distrust themselves, when resting their minds — even in the briefest moments – is essential for survival, and when it’s crucial to be able to tell friends from foes.

In service to these people who are in service to us, I have decided to give a copy of my book to any soldier in the U.S. military stationed in either of those war-ravaged countries.  I will also ship the books for free.

To order a copy of 21 Games for The Mind that Won’t Shut the @#&* Up! for any U.S. service man or woman in either Afghanistan or Iraq, send the soldier’s name with their postal address in either of those two countries to info@primenumberpress.com or send by mail to Prime Number Press, P.O. Box 898, Sausalito, CA 94966

The books will be shipped within two days following receipt of the order.

Today, when I opened Yahoo! to access one of my email accounts, I noticed that they have recently changed their log-in page. Now, there is a headshot photo of an attractive person, sometimes male, sometimes female, with the accompanying text:

Find your inner everything.   Make Yahoo! your home   Y !

Last year, I began reading about Information Theory developed in 1948 by a scientist named Claude Shannon at Bell Labs, a research division of AT&T.  In this reading, I learned that those who create telephones, televisions, iPhones, iPads, this computer, and all other communications devices have a very different take on what “information” is and why it matters.

For those in the communications industry who incorporate Information Theory into their designs and into their advertising of the sort quoted above, “information” relates to how many devices can be put between two entities wanting to talk to each other.  For example, it takes a radio, a TV or a personal electronic device for the non-print media to get their news or entertainment to you.  Also, it takes a telephone, a cell phone, a fax, a computer or some other sort of mechanical device for you to call someone living in another state.

Yet, as humans wanting to share our ideas, we most commonly use the word ”information” to refer to the meaning in the message we are communicating. Nevertheless, the businesses who provide us these devices for communication, could care less what we say or what ideas we transmit.  What profoundly matters to them is that we consider their bandwidth as necessary for our existence as are the synaptic gaps in our brains over which the instructions for our lives and very survival pass.

This new Yahoo! ad is bold evidence of this.  Not only are computers and their vast field of services now pitching to our desire to tell one another about our lives and our recent thoughts.  Now, we are being invited, not simply to use computers as adjuncts to our brains, but, by making a computer program “home” and the source of our “inner everything,” we are being invited to replace our brains entirely.

A bit disturbing, eh?  And, yet, I must yield in awe to the balls of their advertisers. How freakin’ clever!

Worry is a pervasive and perverse state of mind.  It is pervasive because it’s companion state of fear is the currency of media news broadcasters.  The experience of fear is incited by the belief that there is a powerful and imminent presence that is intent on keeping you from achieving your desire or, more potently, intent on taking from you that which you currently have.  Once the story of this presence takes hold, the mind formulates and recycles worry thoughts – visions of  these unwelcome events coming to pass.

Worry is perverse because it is not a creative state of mind in which you are actively engaged in moving toward that which you inwardly desire. Worry is, instead, a state that is entirely reactionary and focused on the world outside of yourself and beyond your control.  And, because the story that causes you to worry is something outside of your control and influence, worry engenders a state of impotence, as well.

There is, however, a way to use this state to one’s glorious advantage and, in the process, to transform one’s mind to regain a more effective and comfortable relationship with the world.  When you become aware that you are experiencing a worried state, allow it to awaken you to these three greater truths:

a) your attention has drifted from the only life over which you have authority — your own;

b) you have chosen to invest your imagination in a story about an unpleasant outcome, a story which relies on the, often unverified, perception that the people involved lack the capacities to deal effectively with the events in their own lives; and

c) you are also, simultaneously, investing in the story that you are more capable of dealing with their challenges than they are.

The next time you recognize you have fallen into the trance of worry, simply turn your attention back to those details of your own life which you can effectively influence and affect.  Through this realignment of attention, you will both recover your own composure and you will be contributing mightily to the forward, creative flow of life.  In addition, you will be a beacon of light who demonstrates how to live boldly while allowing others the respect and dignity to delight in their own adventures and experiences as they choose.

Should someone, then, ask you for assistance, your mind is open and ready to contribute the skills you actually possess to help effect a satisfactory outcome.

In today’s edition of the Blue Cat Screenplay Competition Newsletter, one of the topics is the current trend in Hollywood to produce movie remakes of earlier successful films or TV shows.  On a poster for the remake of The A Team , the tagline is “There is No Plan B.”

This is such a perfect example of drama-think.  Of course, as every student of dramatic writing knows – be it screenwriting, novel writing, short story writing and even poetry writing — conflict is the essence of drama.  And, for a movie about a group of vigilantes fighting the good fight to defeat crime and bad guys, this is a most appropriate tagline.

However, for your own daily life, to live hour after hour in this state of mind, defining your existence with the language of drama, is a guaranteed path to sustained hell and debilitating exhaustion.  Even in the most dramatic movie frought with battles and bad guys, the hero fights the good fight for a mere 120 minutes, max, before the story is resolved and peace is regained.  Even when the hero dies, he at least achieves the ultimate peace.

Yet, when you mistake the behavior and dialogue of dramatic structure for the language and behavior of an effective, successful and satisfying life, there is no respite from conflict.  In the drama state of mind, wherever two or more of you are gathered together and one is the hero, can you guess what role the other person automatically must play?  You guessed it; the bad guy.  The mind that is locked into the language of drama cannot help but do this protagonist-antagonist casting.  And, the person whose language patterns were predominantly learned from dramatic works — literature, fiction, TV, broadcast news, newspapers — will be most prone to apply those patterns to his or her own experience.

In STORY, Robert McKee’s book on screenwriting, McKee observes that 99% of the time, in real life, the outcome we seek to accomplish is acheived with a minimum of action and effort, and, more often than not, with the desired cooperation of other people.  This is easy to test for yourself right now by simply reflecting on the last hour of your life.

Just notice how, when you last opened your mouth to speak, the words you wanted to say flowed out.  When you wanted to walk across the room, your feet moved with minimal effort and probably without conscious thought on your part.  And, right this instant, your last meal is being digested and its nutrients being distributed throughout your body with neither your conscious effort nor your intellectual comprehension of how it is doing this.

So, back to Plan B.  In drama, there is no Plan B.  However, in life, in your life, there is always a Plan B.  For 99% of that 1% of times when success is not acheiveable with minimal effort, implementing Plan B only requires the addition of either a bit more energy or a minor shift in plans.

You want to say something and suddenly forget what it was.  So, you scan your memory for another moment and the thought returns.  You want to walk across the room and you trip on your laptop’s cord.  So, you take a few stumbling steps, maybe bump against the table, then you recover and continue on.  You eat a ton of hot peppers on your enchilada and your tummy swells up with gas.  So, often even without your taking an antacid, your digestive system expells the resultant gas, one way or another, and you are ready to eat more Mexican food in no time.

For most of us, most of the time, the lion’s share of all we want to do at any given moment is magnificently accessible and doable. And, at rare moments, just a bit more effort or redirection is required in order to acheive the desired satisfaction. However, as McKee points out, although “This is the great mass of experience, hour by hour, in life,” it is “NEVER, EVER IN A STORY” [capitalization by McKee].

Therefore, when the language patterns of dramatic structure govern a person’s mode of thinking and speaking about his life, he will do one of two things.  In order to conform to the rules of this language, the person will either edit out of memory the 99% of events that went as planned and only think about and share with others those moments when more effort or a change of plans was required.  Or, the other tack that is taken is to perceive or create dramatic skirmishes in every encounter with other people and with events in the world.  This is the birthplace of the drama queen.

A constant diet of watching and listening to famous, enviable people enacting dramatic roles and singing drama-infused songs combined with the high drama/conflict scenarios of broadcast news and “reality” programs only strengthens the illusion that conflict is essential and central to an exciting life.  Nevertheless, life continues on in its 99% cooperation with our survival, requiring minimal effort of us to keep us alive and actually thriving from one day to the next. Yet, only when people incorporate additional language patterns – the patterns of cooperation, appreciation, fascination and awareness of what is actually occurring in the world about them — can they harvest the true fruits of Life itself.

When those patterns are available, deciding upon and implementing your Plan B becomes an opportunity to use the rich resources of your imagination and is guaranteed to result in a story of success truly worth writing about.

As we grow from infancy into this worldly life, the initial and innate activity of our minds and, thus our bodies, is the giving of all we’ve got. In order to know what that all is, we first reach out to explore and experience all that we can. I suspect this is also true of every other species. Yet, watching and being of this group, I can most confidently say that this is true for us.

Our dominant motivation is not the getting of anything; it is the giving, the doing, the participating. We incessantly reach to know for ourselves the satisfaction and thrill of touching the world, engaging with Life and having influence in the lives of other people.

Yet, so often, these initial attempts at interaction, when we extend our arms into the air, are mis-interpreted or translated for us as “Baby wants to eat this,” “Baby wants Mommy or Daddy to do that.” And the adults who describe our experience this way were misdirected long ago. They may even hold themselves in disdain as having been reduced to incessant getting-machines. And, as they continue the tradition of turning new giving minds into getting mouths, they feel the yoke of being the infant’s waiter, chauffeur and slave.

Soon, the joy of having given birth to a helpmate is replaced by the resentment of being simply a caretaker. As the subservient parents are making one more generation of frustrated consumers, their own gifts to the world go unmanifested. And those world-enhancing, possibly, species-preserving ideas, which are eager to be expressed through them, may lie dormant for their entire lifetime. Then, even apart from child-rearing, this same, well-programmed adult may continue to believe his best contributions to life lie in what he gets. He, then, turns his attention to feeding, clothing and idly amusing himself, while the world spins on the poorer for it.