DC45: State vs Step Change – The individual inside culture
Protect yourself from the end of the world
No one knew what was about to happen in March 2020 or the impact of the decisions that Governments and Pharmaceutical companies would make. It was not possible to see the long-term damage done by the media and the continued degradation that media and social media continue to have on our society, our children, and our workplace expectations.
This article is about culture and how the individual (that means you) is affected by it. It also discusses what we can do to shield ourselves from it and how we might change culture.
I have been working on it for the last 18 months, especially formulating it in the last month, hence the delay in writing anything else.
Summary conclusion
We influence and are influenced by the culture, systems, and people around us.
If we understand the forces that create influence, we can better
shield ourselves from unwanted effects,
create more productive, lucrative, and fulfilling lives for ourselves,
and change the cultures we live in to be better and more wholesome.
The article shows how this is possible.
Measuring your baseline consciousness and its variation over time
Everyone has a baseline state of what is normal for them. This includes
the amount of awareness one has of one’s surroundings,
the level of happiness,
the level of productivity
the level of financial wealth and stability
the narrative that one tells oneself about the world,
what you perceive as God (could be nothing),
and your state of mental, emotional, and physical health.
The baseline is like your default state. If nothing is going on, this is how you are. It can change over time.
When events occur in your life, they generally have a perceived positive and negative impact on your state.
These events move your experience and your state from the default baseline. This variance is short-term, and your state then returns to baseline once the impact from the event is over.
Here is an example.
This graph represents this person’s state of being over several months. The average state recorded at fixed durations apart and plotted over a 24-hour timeline shows the state of being as a baseline with a variance in the 5% and 95% range.
This graph allows us to see a snapshot of a person’s state of being, which I call their consciousness (the amount they are awake to themselves), and how this varies across days and hour by hour.
This graph shows a noticeable uplift around midday and in the evenings. Many people feel low at night when the body processes many emotions.
How this graph is created
You may recall an article I wrote on the map of consciousness. In summary, the map is a linear list of states of being with associated awareness, outlook (view of life and God), and the process by which the person operates. Using this map as a guide, it is easy to record which state one feels one is in at a given moment.
Using the noticing exercise, it is possible to record data about oneself at a given moment. By enhancing the data collected beyond the original mindfulness exercise, a richer dataset, including feelings of financial safety, health concerns, and productive flow state, can be recorded on a simple, plottable scale.
It is also possible to use the methods David Hawkins uses to record levels of consciousness; however, I have found this to be unreliable. I am attending a course in a few weeks on how to do this properly, so perhaps that will yield better results.
Taking the data from several months and overlaying it onto a single representative day yields multiple readings for each time period. This is plotted on a graph with a median and 5 and 95 percentile ranges.
Why is this useful?
This data shows trends in our perspective of our health, awareness, productivity, and outlook (which guides the inner narrative). We can see trends over time, daily trends, and hourly factors.
This can be used to improve ourselves and, most importantly, make a step change.
State vs Step Changes
So far, the variations we have discussed in the baseline are all state changes. They are small variations in how we are feeling and operating. These can give us as good indication of what factors are influencing our lives on a daily and hourly basis.
I am also interested in Step changes. These are much more significant and cause the baseline to shift up or down significantly. Often these are caused by either existential crisis moments or something significant happening in our lives, such as a new partner, job, or God-like realisation.
In this example graph above, the person records a significant shift when they cross the courage line and then a significant step change with a powerful experience that alters their baseline to remain above the courage line.
A shift in the default state or baseline is like changing our centre of gravity. All state changes are made, plus or minus, to the baseline.
A state change is the little things that happen every day in our lives that make us feel good or bad but don’t change the underlying default baseline state.
A step change is something that changes the baseline, our default state, to be different.
Power vs Force – the courage line
A person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still – old proverb
Here is a quick recap from the previous article.
The courage line is a level on the graph above which is the state of consciousness where there is an available amount of courage to make change in a positive and creative way. Daily life above the line is achieved through the power of presence.
Below the courage line, there is not an available awareness to achieve courage, and this means the person is on average a net taker of energy, and this means they solve problems reactively and with force.
If you want to be a change agent or a net giver to any system rather than a drain on it, you need to be above the courage line most of the time. If you want to create organisations with a creative culture, you need most people to be above this line. Data from a few years ago shows that 85% of people have a baseline below the courage line, so this is going to be very challenging.
How to achieve STEP changes
Step changes are created in one of two ways. The first usually happens by accident but can be achieved through certain rituals that invoke a shock wake-up call. These are the existential awakenings that life either throws at us in crisis or in epiphany.
The Spiral Butterfly retreat creates epiphany moments to shock the system into a higher-step change.
The second approach is more gradual and requires constant vigilance of one’s state changes. By consistently living at a higher state, we will shift our baseline. Examples of this are meditating every day, eating well, keeping good company, and living in a culture that resonates at a higher frequency than our baseline.
The second method requires discipline for consistent practice on a target that is intangible to the mind. This means that almost no one does it. To sacrifice the tangible, immediate pleasures for an intangible presence is a big ask.
There are solutions for this that are outside of this article’s scope.
The effect of culture on state change
Each of us is a community creature. We are all looking for some sort of connection. I can share wisdom from the highest states, which I occasionally achieve through state changes.
Everything you are doing, whether you are at work, having sex, serving your addictions, watching TV, scrolling social media, or hanging with friends, is to mend the sense of abandonment that we have in our collective illusion that we are separate individuals.
Once this illusion is removed (at the state of love in the map), our motives and internal processes change. However, given that very few people operate from this level of awakening, culture is made up of people trying to find connections using various states that drive a range of behaviours that create a temporary but beneficial environment for one that creates suffering.
As empathic beings seeking connection, we draw in the energy that our culture gives out, and we resonate on that frequency for acceptance and to fit in. This is autonomous and automatic. We are affected by those around us, the news we read or watch, and the narratives other people hold and share.
This has a huge impact on our state and, therefore, our baseline. Our culture and the information we consume lock us to the average baseline. This is the biggest problem we face on our planet. All other problems are secondary.
Why the agile movement has ended.
Current state
During the pandemic, the level of fear generated was huge. I can’t imagine a more effective way to lower the consciousness of humanity than to tell everyone that by even seeing loved ones, you might spread or catch an illness that can kill you. To keep everyone isolated on and off for nearly two years. To inject an entire population with drugs derived from dead human foetuses.
And then to have two globally impactful wars that continually threaten to escalate into a global conflict that could end all of our societies.
For our media to spread and continue to spread every negative event that occurs, both through formal news channels and the constant stream of inanity that comes through social media.
In the UK, we have a state-led news system that says it is unbiased and yet continually pumps news of deaths, rapes, murders, people gone missing, criminal activity, political instability and global tragedies. We are being scared into submission.
We have a sorry and broken culture. We have lowered our consciousness of ourselves, and we continue to allow it to happen as more and more incredibly bright and vibrant children grow and flounder in a sea of hopelessness that the problems are too big and too out of their control to care.
The death of the agile movement
Agile has fallen out of favour, with more and more people reporting a move away from coaching roles and into other areas. Agile training and consultancy are virtually non-existent, and certifications in role-based training are down to the lowest levels ever.
Why is this happening when complexity levels are still increasing? How is it that a set of tools and techniques encapsulated by a mindset that deals with people, complexity, and improvement has fallen out of favour exactly when organisations need them most?
The agile movement is based on the courage to change. It is based on a belief system that values people more than processes. Coaching is based on a sense of neutrality and letting go of one’s own agenda to serve the greater flow of the system.
As the level of consciousness dropped across the planet due to the pandemic and wars, especially in Europe and the US, the value and perspective that drove the agile revolution has fallen out of reach for the vast majority. To the vast majority of managers and product developers, they won’t be able to see the point in it.
This is a global cultural lowering of humanity's consciousness that has meant these tools for collaboration and complexity have become once again unavailable to us. This is the primary cause of the end of agility in organisations.
The relationship of culture to individual state and step changes
As the cultural step changes, in this case, to a lower state, we are all influenced by it, and our collective behaviours reflect it. As our behaviours change to fit in, we cause a temporary state change in our own experience.
As this temporary state change becomes longer and more permanent, it creates a permanent step change in our own consciousness, and we start to experience life at this lower level of awakening.
The tools and systems we used to value have become irrelevant to us. Just like the wonders of the Roman Empire were lost in the Dark Ages, we are experiencing our own very small but significant mini dark age.
What can we do about it?
The difference with us from ancient Rome, is that, if you are not too far gone under the courage line, (and probably you have at least state changes above this line otherwise you would not be reading this), you can still enact certain practices that elevate your own state changes that counteract the cultural drop and protect yourself from it, whilst at the same time still having the connection we all seek.
This is really critical in this time, because we have a lot of cultural elements that are against us. By against us, I mean they are lowering your energy to a point below the courage line. People below the courage line are unreachable. This is important you don’t go there for too long.
The highest priority item on the agenda is to build connections (that all of us are driven to find) with things that will raise your energy levels and keep you courageous. Anything that drops your energy, especially things that build hopelessness and apathy, should be dropped and replaced from your daily life. Use the courage you have to find a way.
Support and a place for culture survivors.
This is the next step for me: to link up with other existing high-energy communities and start building our own support community for those who want to grow, use their courage to stay above the cultural despondency, and even make a difference.
Connect with me if you want to build a community that emphasises and makes readily accessible practices that build connections and raise our energy.
Watch out for the Deeper Change community…
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