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A Conscious Education

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A Conscious Education

Almost everyone agrees that the education we receive from elementary through high school or college, and/or graduate school; as well as from our parents, peers, and culture, prepares us for what we call normal life; and actually, it does!  The problem is that we define normal life almost exclusively in terms of external, material, financial, and recreational needs. What makes this a problem is that all real purpose, meaning, and fulfillment depends on learning how to understand and master the internal world of our mental and emotional needs and potentials, as well as thinking for understanding.

Anyone who studies human history quickly sees that as a species, we have never learned from experience—we only repeat it!  We repeat the same violent tragedies, and the same discontents and empty lives with conflicted close relationships.  As a result, the problems Socrates and his wife experienced 2500 years ago are essentially the same as any modern couple. No learning, and predictably, no change!  Of course, political conflict and the horror of meaningless wars, along with predictable episodes of economic booms and busts, are still an inescapable part of everyday human life.

The critical source, or ultimate cause of our collective inability to learn from experience is that as a species, we have never learned how to learn!  Instead, we unconsciously persist in fearing the facts that define human life, and persistently adopt beliefs, or live in our feelings and fantasies; while everyday reality remains a murky fog, impossible to understand.

Since we never learn how to learn, we stubbornly repeat all our destructive patterns, generation after generation, as if no one had lived before—and we were the very first generation.  One tragic consequence is that we forever fail to see reality accurately enough to learn that our external desire for success, money, and entertainment may be required for survival and comfort, but it can never create real purpose, meaning, and fulfillment.

What we still need to see, and learn, is that feeding and fulfilling our internal needs and potentials is required for peace of mind, self-worth, and being complete with life; so, we can learn how to fulfill ourselves, build emotional bonds, and create meaningful work.  This means that in fact, we do need material success for survival and comfort—but we also need internal, mental and emotional development, if our lives are ever going to matter!

Because human beings are born blank slates, we have to discover everything about life, love, learning and living from knowing nothing; so, we must be educated in how to become conscious, and in the process, master every internal and external need and potential.  Sadly, our entire history as a species has been defined by our obsession with success, approval, power and pleasure; and to date, we have not consciously studied, or clearly identified precisely how to understand and master our internal needs and potentials.

Filling this gap in human knowledge and conscious awareness has been my life’s work.  Now, it is everyone’s job, if we want to collectively survive as a culture, and as a species, to learn how to master both external survival and comfort—and internal fulfillment and lasting happiness.  It is important to note two things: one, we need to add internal development to external survival and comfort—it is not an either/or situation; and two, internal development requires a conscious education that is an evolutionary step for human beings, and therefore, a very big deal! 

Education requires that we acquire both objective information—and specific skills.  To do this requires multiple sources of experience.  Reading books, individual consultations, workshops, and videos are all part of the educational experience in learning how to become a conscious, complete, and internally fulfilled human being. 

In the process, each student must also learn how to observe his/her own daily experience.  From our own observations, as well as books, movies, consultations, interactions with other people and time in Nature, we build an inventory of information about ourselves, life, and other people that we rely on to apply reason, make hypotheses, and test with our own experiments; so, we can truly learn about ourselves, other people, and Nature. 

As you can see, getting a conscious education, over and above your normal education, is going to take focused effort—sometimes called work, as well as committing your time, real caring, and on occasion, maybe even accepting some suffering, as just part of the cost.   

A good place to begin is with reading the four introductory books beginning with: The Structure of Mental & Emotional Development.   This book provides the fundamental facts necessary to understand the anatomy and physiology of mental and emotional development.  This information is critical to understanding ourselves as a human being; as opposed to Gorillas or Gila monsters, and for the first time, truly understand our uniquely human internal needs and potentials, along with an introduction in how to master them.

Next, reading Timeless Lessons from a Well-Lived & Loved Ordinary Life, will give you insight into how to apply a conscious education to the ordinary events in your daily life.  Where The Structure book reads more like a text-book, the Timeless Lessons book is a psychological autobiography that reads more like a novel.  Each book offers a different angle on how to see and understand the vast new world of human developmental tasks.

The next book directly addresses the issue of developmental tasks.  This book is titled: Developmental Tasks of Children, Adolescents & Adults.  Being fulfilled and creating lasting happiness requires we become consciously aware of each stage of life as we march through our lifespan.  Surprisingly, people tend to be unaware of the current stage of their lives, and often have no information or skill in how to identify the the developmental tasks necessary to grow into, and be relaxed and fulfilled at each stage of life.

The last book of the first Introductory Four, is in fact, the first in everyone’s development.  The reason I list this book last, is because it represents a core change that everyone so far has mightily resisted.  This book deals with how to first understand, and then change from being normal and relying on beliefs and feelings to define reality and everything in it, to relying on observations, questions, reason, and experiments to consciously understand life, ourselves, other people and Nature.  The title of this book is: How to Create a Personal Environment of Internal Fulfillment & Lasting Happiness.

This book is critical, because as a species, we humans are just now beginning to understand that we live in complex environments, so for us, it is new and sometimes overwhelming to see that nothing in ourselves, other people, or Nature ever comes down to just one thing!  Life is always a complex environment of things, where if we destroy one thing, it affects everything.  This is true for individual happiness, as well as for other people and Nature. This means that if we persist in relying on beliefs and feelings to define reality, then we live in fantasy worlds that make us forever inadequate to fulfill ourselves, or nurture other people, or the planet.  Life on Planet Earth cannot be sustained on fantasies!

One Basic Purpose for Living: To Thoroughly Experience & Completely Understand The Mystery of Being Both Alive & Human

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One Basic Purpose for Living:
To Thoroughly Experience & Completely Understand
The Mystery of Being Both Alive & Human

In spite of being largely unconscious, and usually based on assumptions, beliefs, feelings and ideas that we absorb from our social environment, everyone’s life is to some degree structured by purposes.  For the top 10 percent of our species, the purpose for living is to accomplish, acquire, and be recognized.  In other words, money, power, pleasure and fame are our primary motivators.  For the vast majority of us, however, we simply want to have enough accomplishment to acquire physical, financial, and emotional security.  As a result, our first purpose is to have a secure job, satisfying mate, a house and cars, and probably children.  Then, we want entertainment and friends.

At the lower end of the social/financial scale, we just want to live with some kind of decent and dignified survival and peace. Wherever on the scale we happen to be, there is no education or social awareness to show us that mastering the ability to thoroughly experience and completely understand human life is necessary to fulfill our potentials, feed our needs, complete our development, and create lasting happiness.

For all our technological advancements the development of self-awareness, and our understanding of the mystery of being both alive and human, is pitifully meager. This observation only means that it is now time, perhaps way past time, to learn about ourselves and life with the purpose of understanding the mystery of being alive and human.

It just so happens that I have spent a lifetime pursuing the answer to one question—”What, if anything, is necessary to make human life satisfying and meaningful?”  First understanding the question, then exploring life and the minds and experiences of other people has been necessary for me to discover that the invisible internal world of human experience is the source for layer upon layer of complex answers to my simple question.

 I first asked my question and defined my purpose at the age of five when my grandmother died. She was my favorite person, and really the only one who actually cared about and nurtured me. Even at the time, I could see my grandmother had had a very difficult life—married to a sphinx of a man with the tenderness of a stone—four children, all girls—hence one source of her interest in me—going thru World War I, the depression, then world War II, and finally, dying in 1950 at age 55 having experienced little joy and no fulfillment, seemed to my young mind an exercise in futility.

My response was to see that I too would go through a lifespan and die. Given my grandmother’s experience, this made me fervently wish I had never been born.

Since it was apparent that I was already alive and there was only one way out—much like being pregnant—I decided to make the most of it and spend my life figuring out precisely what would make this mystery of being alive worth effort and suffering, knowing in advance, the inevitable end to the story is my personal extinction!

In response, I spent my life gathering information about the mystery of being alive and human.  I have read endless biographies to learn how famous people chose to live.  I read literature, and studied the lives of writers.  I also studied music and musicians, painters, sculptors, actors, and other artists to see how artistic people chose to live.

Eventually, I studied scientists, naturalists, artists, businessman, politicians, soldiers, teachers, doctors, psychologists and lawyers, and anyone I met to learn how they responded to life and to what degree they were developed, fulfilled, and truly happy.  First with themselves, then with relationships, and finally, with their careers and professions. I discovered that people were more likely to be happy with their careers, than with themselves and their most important relationships.                                    

Ultimately, I could see that no matter how smart, successful, rich, or famous someone might be, no one knew how to thoroughly experience and completely understand the mystery of being alive. Most were honest and admitted that for them life began and ended a mystery, which meant in part, they never did understand their own internal needs, potentials, and developmental tasks—or how to create emotionally bonded long-term intimate relationships that were satisfying, equal, and reciprocal.

This information helped me see that I needed to clearly define, “thoroughly experience” and “completely understand” in relation to first fulfilling ourselves, and then loving life and other people. In exploring the meaning of thoroughly experience, I learned that we needed to be innocent, curious, and grounded in accurate observations of reality—  rather than be disconnected by vague beliefs, assumptions, and feelings. I also saw we needed to gather the information provided by our senses, and we needed to learn about Nature, how to experience and express love, how to explore life and discover what is worth loving, and how to use every experience and insight to slowly develop wisdom.

During this process, I learned that experiencing love begins with innocence and curiosity, while expressing love requires learning and nurturing. Wisdom, I discovered, comes from using information gathered from our observations, and connections we make using reason and experiments to learn how life works until we completely understand and thoroughly master our internal needs, potentials, and developmental tasks.

I have written down much of what I learned in the seven books currently available on my website, and use all of it in the individual sessions, videos and workshops that I offer. If this blog has awakened some innocent curiosity, consider exploring CMED.

Creating a Conscious Context Necessary For a Completely Fulfilled & Meaningful Life

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Creating a Conscious Context Necessary
For a Completely Fulfilled & Meaningful Life

Everyone’s life is structured, and often limited by its context. By context, I mean we live with purposes and priorities that in normal life, are often unconscious. Generally, we limit ourselves to external purposes and priorities that are material, tangible, and physical. As a result, we typically pursue lives we hope will be safe, comfortable, pleasant, and somehow, without ever creating a single clear definition, fulfilling.

The primary problem with a normal context for human life is that we have no clear definitions or detailed understanding of a single internal need, potential, purpose, goal, or developmental task. In addition, even our ideas about external fulfillment are built on assumptions, beliefs, and feelings that we unconsciously adopt, rather than consciously explore and clearly understand. In stark contrast, a conscious context for everyday life is built on detailed definitions for both internal and external fulfillment and meaning.

In order to create detailed definitions, we need to learn how to concentrate on one topic at a time, then accurately observe the facts of everyday life, and finally, apply reason and experiment until we can clearly define and thoroughly understand our topic. This is the process necessary to think for understanding, which is the basis for creating the conscious context necessary for a completely fulfilled and meaningful life. Thinking for understanding is also necessary for taking the next step in our internal evolution.

The primary challenge of the 21st century is that the power of our technology has far outstripped the power of our understanding. The tragic consequence is that as a species, we have not developed either the love or the wisdom necessary to use technology to enhance everyone’s individual life, and protect the planet. Instead, we use technology to dominate and exploit both the planet and each other, with the inevitable consequence of destroying the quality of life for both ourselves, and our ailing planet.

To nurture the planet and fulfill ourselves, we must expand the context of human life to include the entire internal world of our mental and emotional needs, potentials, and developmental tasks that we have heretofore allowed to remain unexplored and undefined. We also need to clearly define the physical and material needs and potentials that are pre-requisites to fulfillment in the external world we are more familiar with, but still don’t really understand.

What everyone needs to see is that we normally think and talk relying on generalized conclusions, and never create clear and experiential definitions of our topic. Without clear definitions of every significant word and issue, understanding is impossible.         

Of course, without understanding we can never become loving and wise, or internally competent to create fulfillment, meaning, and lasting happiness.  As a species, we have learned that clear definitions are required to advance science and technology, but we still rely on vague feelings and beliefs, or generalized conclusions and assumptions when it comes to defining our internal development, level of consciousness, and the internal competence required to fulfill ourselves, and nurture other people and Nature.

Awakening a burning desire to master the complex task of thinking for understanding for the innocent purpose of learning how to become a source of love rather than a needy recipient changes the context of our entire life experience.  Now, we commit to becoming conscious, caring, and competent in the internal and external dimensions of human experience. A genuine understanding of the fact that learning how to think for understanding is an evolutionary step in human development is needed to awaken a burning desire, which is a pre-requisite for creating whole-hearted commitment.

Even in this short discussion, is it becoming evident that mental and emotional development is a step-by-step educational experience, not a simplistic one-step conclusion, or quick technique that will magically solve every problem and leave us happy ever after? If so, then your observation is accurate and follows common sense, because just like our advances in science and technology have grown over time fueled by the concentrated effort of many people, so the internal evolution of our species will require the same or even greater degree of concentration, time, and effort.

Time is of the essence. The problems and conflicts that plague every culture on the planet, along with the global changes in climate and ever-increasing demands on ever-decreasing resources means that we live in a world that is becoming ever more fragile and uncertain. At the moment, we just assume that technology will solve our problems. We fail to see that as a species, we lack the consciousness, caring, and internal competence to understand both ourselves and the issues with enough clarity and detail to see what is needed, agree on a plan of action, and then work together to create a conscious world capable of sustaining a quality life for all its inhabitants—human and animal.

We have already proven that technology alone will not save us, simply because fear, greed, and a lack of understanding motivate us to use technology to dominate and exploit rather than nurture and protect. This means our only real hope, individually and as a species, is to master the internal development that is our uniquely human, but heretofore, unfulfilled potential.

The education provided by CMED offers a detailed step-by-step process for first mastering thinking for understanding, and then the internal needs, potentials, and developmental tasks required for the next step in our mental and emotional evolution.

Gateway to Mental & Emotional Development

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Gateway to Mental & Emotional Development

Seven New Blogs
October-November 2015

1 – Understand Internal Vs. External Life—Then Master Both!

2 – How One Sentence Can Change Not Only Every Individual Life: But the Whole World!

3 – Self-Worth—The Critical Key to All Real Learning, Romantic Intimacy, Internal Fulfillment and Lasting Happiness

4 – Applying the Definition of Real Love to Everyday Life

5 – The Need for Real Love in Long-term Romantic Relationships

6 – Contrasting Licensed Psychotherapy & Unlicensed Coaching With Education In Mental & Emotional Development

7 – The Conscious Purpose & Thought Process Necessary to Understand Ourselves, Life, and Other People

 

Understand Internal Vs. External Life – Then Master Both!

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Understand Internal Vs. External Life – Then Master Both!

As much as we try to ignore, deny, explain or distract away from it, being alive is an unsolvable mystery that is sometimes cruel, sometimes inspiring and joyful, and often frightening.  The mystery that most affects human beings is the fact that unlike other animals we have the potential to develop self-awareness, and with it the ability to understand significant portions of ourselves, other people, life and Nature.

Fulfilling our human potential to be self-aware, and to work toward understanding life’s mysteries, is the beginning of an internal life.  However, if we do not fulfill these potentials, then we either fail to develop an internal life, or we are so superficial that we create more disappointment than inspiration, joy, love and wisdom.

A complete internal life is the result of mastering our mental and emotional, or internal needs and potentials.  Internal needs are defined by our universal need for self-worth, purpose, meaning, intimacy, beauty, wisdom, etc.  Internal potentials are defined by our uniquely human potential to understand, care, master, create and contribute.

By contrast, external life is defined by every need and potential outside our minds and emotions—like our external need for food, clothing, shelter, transportation, etc., or our potential to be physically healthy, professionally successful, financially secure, etc.

In normal life, we merge internal with external needs and wants, as well as potentials, so rather than create clear definitions and a detailed understanding of ourselves, life and other people, we create a confusing chaos of feelings, beliefs, and vague notions.

The lack of clearly defining internal vs. external life is the major reason human beings have failed to evolve mentally and emotionally.  As a result, we still fail to understand internal experiences: like how to create intimacy in long-term romantic relationships, or how to parent children so they grow-up not just able to make a living, but also develop a complete self-worth, can understand themselves, life and other people, and have the skills and awareness necessary to create internal fulfillment and lasting happiness.

Instead of evolving, after almost two hundred thousand years of human existence on planet Earth, we still cannot live in harmony with Nature, or each other.  We are still motivated by fear and greed, resolve conflicts with violence, exploit the weak, and as a species, prefer to distract with drugs, alcohol and mindless entertainments, rather than learn how to create intensely satisfying and truly meaningful internal and external lives.

If we look at the world through the eyes of an all-powerful Creator, we could imagine how He might feel disappointed in homo sapiens and be inclined to wipe the slate clean (eliminate the species), consider it a failed experiment, and then try again learning from His initial mistakes!  Even if the Creator lets us live, we may still drive ourselves extinct from a failure to master our internal needs and potentials.

Should we want to not just survive, but also fulfill our potentials motivated by a desire to flourish on a planet we are internally competent to make healthy and beautiful—or perhaps, just want to live out our lives internally fulfilled, then we need to concretely define internal vs. external life, needs and wants, feelings and facts, reality and fantasy, and every human potential.

Evolution in science has come about because we have systematically defined layer upon layer of observable facts and experiences in our everyday lives.  Prior to the scientific method, however, our progress in understanding Nature was glacially slow.

After the scientific method was adopted, our external progress has been phenomenal—but our internal development has not kept pace.  Now, we need to adopt the scientific method to study not just Nature, but ourselves, so we can first learn how to learn, and then master every internal and external need, potential, and developmental task. 

It has been my life’s work to lay the foundation necessary to understand ourselves, life, and each other for the innocent purpose of creating satisfying and meaningful lives, internally bonded relationships, and an evolving world where everyone learns to express love, pursue truth, experience and create beauty, and develop wisdom.

How One Sentence Can Change Not Only Every Individual Life: But the Whole World!

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How One Sentence Can Change
Not Only Every Individual Life:
But the Whole World!

The one sentence critical to each person’s individual internal development and lasting happiness is an objective and experience-based definition of the word LOVE.

Real Love is giving energy, interest and attention for the innocent purpose of first understanding, and then nurturing all that we love.

There are six dimensions of complex life experiences identified in this one sentence.

The first dimension is Giving.
Most people do not understand how to give internal experiences like energy, interest and attention.

Normally, we want to get external things like security, sex, money, and pleasantly stimulating or exciting and pleasurable experiences.  We also want to just “feel good” about ourselves, and usually assume that if we get everything we want we will be happy, but then fail to observe people who have everything, and yet never seem to get enough, and always want more.

The problem with getting what we want is that we are focused on external gratifications, while what we need are internal fulfillments—like the competence to understand and nurture, and the ability to pursue truth, experience beauty, and develop wisdom.  Even after a lifetime of getting everything we want, there is always an emptiness inside that pathetically wonders, “Is this all there is?”

By contrast, after a lifetime of giving interest, energy and attention, we are filled-up with conscious and meaningful experiences that have taught, touched and changed us.  In the process, we have made ourselves internally complete by mastering the ability to express love, pursue truth, experience beauty and develop wisdom.

Now, at the end of our lifespan we are fulfilled, and while we may leave life reluctantly, we are at peace knowing we have lived as fully and completely as humanly possible.

The second dimension is giving Energy, Interest and Attention.
In normal life we are so busy getting approval, security, success, pleasure and distraction, we never possess a drop of understanding, love, or wisdom. Often, we are not even aware of our own experience.

We must learn how to give energy, interest, and attention to just be aware of our own experience—which is defined in part by the facts of each moment, what the facts mean, how we respond, and the consequences we create.

One reward for giving energy, interest and attention is that we come to understand ourselves, life, and other people.  We also learn how to absorb every part of the mysterious experience of just being alive, and become competent to nurture all that we love.

The third and fourth dimensions are defined by “Innocent” and “Purpose.
Modern life is often so manipulative and outcome oriented that most people do not think “innocence” still exists.  It is also true that innocence has never been popular with human beings, and in today’s internet and business dominated world, innocence has all but disappeared.

Nonetheless, we all need to give energy, interest and attention delivered with an innocent purpose, which means that we give freely, with no outcome in mind, and no expectation of reciprocity.  This means we offer a real, no strings attached, genuine gift.

In addition to being innocent, we all need to give energy, interest and attention that is purposeful—only our purpose needs to be defined by an innocent desire to understand.

What are selfish reasons for giving energy, interest and attention for the innocent purpose of wanting to understand?  For one, in mastering these basic skills we learn how to feed all real needs: and two, we fulfill our uniquely human potentials to Understand, Care, Master, Create and Contribute.

Another lasting reward for giving energy, interest and attention is that we develop a deep consciousness, caring, and internal competence we get to keep inside ourselves forever.

There is little more pathetic and sad than passing through an entire lifetime and never develop even a small portion of love and wisdom—consciousness and caring.

The fifth dimension is Understanding.
We often confuse understanding with explanations, judgments, conclusions, beliefs, ideas, or feelings.

Real understanding requires that we focus on one topic, observe facts, ask intelligent questions, and develop a desire to see what is true–no matter how painful: like when the truth contradicts our beliefs and feelings, or adds extra tasks and responsibilities we need to acknowledge and accept.

Understanding by itself is useless unless we use it to nurture ourselves, other people, and Nature.  Insight without application is always just an impotent intention that serves only to frustrate, never nurture.

The sixth dimension is Nurturing.
Nurturing requires that we first understand internal needs, potentials and developmental tasks.  Only after we acquire a detailed understanding can we competently nurture ourselves, the people around us, and Nature.

Nurturing, which begins with giving energy, interest and attention, must always be a gift, we can never expect to get anything back or it ceases to be nurturing, and instead, becomes a quid pro quo business deal—no longer satisfying for anyone.

The seventh dimension is putting it all together in one seamless expression of real love!

The Need for Real Love In Long-term Romantic Relationships

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The Need for Real Love
In Long-term Romantic Relationships

We are all familiar with the standard beliefs and feelings about romantic love.  For instance, we think we are in love when we feel “chemistry”, or “…have never before felt this way about anyone!”

The Eskimos have nearly 180 words for “snow”, while we have only one word for the complex experience we call “love.”  I think it is time to expand our understanding by identifying a few of the many different experiences that fall under the auspices of one overused word: Love.

To begin, “chemistry” is just a euphemism for a combination of lust, trust, and comfort.  If we feel comfortable with someone, and believe we can trust them, at least a little, and are physically attracted, then voila! we are in love!

This level of love can be renamed lust-based love. We are lusting after sexual pleasure, as well as feeling emotionally safe.  This version of love is often expressed in romantic novels and movies: i.e., chick flicks.

Another version of “love” is when a woman decides it’s time to find a mate and start a family, and she chooses a man who can provide external security.  Often, she is willing to forego chemistry for reliability and ambition.  This can be called security-based love.

For a man, love is usually lust-based accompanied by a desire that the woman also take care of him physically and emotionally.  While they are rarely aware of it, most men are looking for a sexy mom—and if they find one, tend to cling to her like a new-born baby!

There are more variations in the experience of romantic love, but these three provide a foundation for understanding normal love.  What all the normal variations of romantic love share in common is they are externally-based, and motivated by what men and women want to Get from each other.  Normal love is an external quid-pro-quo contract.

For contrast, Real Love is internally-based and motivated by a conscious purpose to Grow in understanding life, each other and Nature—Share purposes, accomplishments and experiences—and Give energy, interest and attention.  Real love is also innocent, and internally-based on what couples want to Give and Share, rather than Get.

Take a moment, and think about the long-term romantic couples you know, have seen in the news, or in books and movies, and how many even seem to have a conscious, emotionally connected, internally growing, and passionate response to life and each other? 

Make it less complicated, and ask how many individuals do you see whose path through life fits the above description?  How about you?  Does either your individual life or romantic relationship fit the above description—or do they look like something else?

In twenty-five years as a psychologist, and the last ten teaching internal development, my experience is that the best normal relationships are defined by couples who like each other, agree on the external terms of their contract, and accept that without internal development their lives and romantic relationships will be dramatically limited.

However, the most common story is a couple will acquire every external success and luxury, but still feel incomplete, or unhappy.  The problem is that lasting happiness requires internal nurturing provided in part, by genuine understanding.

Since no culture has ever had the information necessary to train people in how to understand and truly love each other—it is normal for people to be internally unhappy.

Typically, we react to being unhappy by pursuing approval, security and pleasure, which leaves no room in our schedules, hearts, or minds to pursue a deep understanding of anything internal—and as we have seen in the last two blogs, without understanding we cannot offer real love.

So why would anyone want to work for the experience of understanding and love?  One reason is because in learning how to express love and develop wisdom, we connect to life in the most intensely satisfying and genuinely meaningful way possible.

On the other hand, one reason we are prone to destructive habits and romantic fantasies, is because we get bored by ordinary life and seek intensity.  The easiest ways to create intensity are through destructive behavior, or sexual encounters and romantic fantasies.  In normal life, we are not trained in how to engage the most intensely satisfying activities life offers—expressing love and developing wisdom.

Developing the ability to understand, which is the pre-requisite for love and wisdom, takes us into an open-ended adventure exploring new avenues of thought and caring that push the edge of the developmental envelope, and often takes us where no human has ever gone before.

The pursuit of understanding is exhilarating beyond imagination, raises the low ceiling of expectations that restricts our lives, and provides internal fulfillment above and beyond what we normally even hope is possible for human life. 

The journey toward internal development takes work and courage.  Work is needed because there is so much to learn, and courage is required because many assumptions, beliefs and feelings are replaced with accurate observations.

One undeniable joy in this sometimes difficult process is that the information CMED provides is objective and experiential, and is easily verified by each interested student.

Another joy of CMED training is that couples share a conscious purpose to develop their minds and emotions, which in turn creates an intense experience of life and love they could not duplicate through any other pursuit.

Internal development creates a lifetime adventure where every day couples can bring the energy of discovery and newness into their individual lives, and their relationship.

This is how long-term romantic relationships can retain not only the initial passion, but build lasting intimacy and a genuine emotional bond.

If you want to experience truly significant adventures that take you to new places in yourself with someone you love, and where you travel through new avenues of thought, caring, understanding, love and wisdom—then you will want to check out the training in internal development provided by CMED.

Contrasting Licensed Psychotherapy & Unlicensed Coaching With Education In Mental & Emotional Development

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Contrasting Licensed Psychotherapy &
Unlicensed Coaching With Education In
Mental & Emotional Development

Since the middle of the twentieth century “therapy” has become a staple of normal American life.  It may be a surprise to people outside the field that in fact there is no agreed upon definition for what constitutes “psychotherapy.”  In fact, once a person has a state issued license—whether as a Marriage & Family therapist, Clinical Psychologist, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, or Psychiatrist (MD licensed in Psychiatry)—whatever he or she decides to do, is now legally “psychotherapy”.

This means there is no agreed-upon protocol for treatment, and no objective criteria for measuring effectiveness.  As a result, in this highly-regulated profession pretending to be scientific, in real-life practice it is in effect the wild-west where almost anything goes.

So if a therapist believes in reincarnation, and that we carry inside ourselves memories of past lives, then he can offer “past life regressions” where the client is induced into a hypnotic state to help her remember who she was in the past.  The theory is that our experience in past lives affects our mental/emotional states in the present, and that connecting the two will help us understand ourselves and make needed changes.

Less fanciful but no more substantiated are more traditional forms of therapy that range from Behavior to Reality therapy, from Psychoanalysis and Ego-psychology to Neuro-linguistic programming and Positive Psychology, to advice giving and problem solving that we could get from an insightful friend.  To date, there is no therapy style that can experientially define and objectively measure precisely what it offers, or even define specifically what is gained if the therapy is successful. 

The consequence is that as a healing profession, “psychotherapy” is strictly a faith-based enterprise—just like religion.  Of course, in our feeling-based world, for most people, this is not a problem.  Often, all we want is a therapist who makes us feel good, so real-life effectiveness is not a consciously defined criteria.

Mostly, we are hungry for energy and attention offered in a context of real or feigned interest by someone who at least pretends to know more about life, living and intimate relationships than we do, and mostly that is exactly what we get!  Feigned interest, and the pretense our therapist knows more than we do.

Coaching, in a sense is more honest.  It is un-regulated, and anyone who has the balls to pretend they know more than other people, or who simply offers some level of warm interest and undivided attention, or perhaps is a charismatic “know-it-all” who makes people feel special just because they know him/her—much like Jim Jones who got nine hundred people to “drink the Kool-Aid” based solely on his personality and say-so—can virtually, literally, or figuratively “hang-out his shingle” and be a coach.

The problem is that as individuals, and as a species, we need objective training in all the “internal” dimensions of real-life human experience so we can fulfill our potential to become consciously content ourselves, and developmentally competent to first understand, and then effectively respond to the complex problems of modern human existence.

Anyone can review the major issues of modern life—whether the personal happiness of each individual, or the well-being and even survival of our species—and see that the global problems of resource depletion, climate change, economic inequality, political strife, religious conflict, species extinction, etc. etc., are far beyond our developmental capacity to either understand, or resolve.

Clearly, as individuals and as a species, we need the mental and emotional development necessary to think through complex problems until we understand what is both true and needed—for ourselves, mates and children, as well as the global healing of Nature, and the well-being of all people.

We need an objective and measurable level of training that clearly defines our own and everyone else’s universal internal needs and potentials, as well as developmental tasks, so we can embark on an educational process to acquire the skills and awareness necessary to think for understanding, build emotional bonds, and master the ability to express love, pursue truth, experience beauty and develop wisdom.

Neither therapy or coaching can offer a single step toward objective internal development, and while each may feel good emotionally, like a body massage can feel good physically, if we observe the objective results there is no real change in our ability to think for understanding, or master internal needs, potentials, and developmental tasks that occurs because of a mental and emotional massage, i.e., psychotherapy or coaching.

The Conscious Purpose & Thought Process Necessary To Understand Ourselves, Life, and Other People

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The Conscious Purpose & Thought Process Necessary
To Understand Ourselves, Life, and Other People

Perhaps surprisingly, the skills and awareness necessary for mental and emotional development begin with learning how to understand ourselves, life, and other people.  This first step is literally, learning how to learn.  The problem is that even the best normal education does not teach us how to understand ourselves, life, and other people!

Instead, in normal life we are taught external facts, ideas, and points of view with little or no connection to real-life issues—internal or external—so we learn how to read, write and do arithmetic, but acquire zero understanding of our internal needs, potentials, and developmental tasks.

As a result, people today are still not able to understand how to create lasting happiness for themselves, build intimacy in long-term romantic relationships, raise children with their self-worth complete, or create satisfaction and meaning in their professional lives.  The underlying problem is the normal purpose and thought process makes accurate observations, conscious exploring and discovering, and all real learning impossible.

The normal purpose for life and education is to create success and security, get approval, and acquire pleasant entertainments in a context of luxury.  With a normal purpose, we do not want understanding—we want control over our goals.  All by itself, a normal purpose insures we will never grow in understanding our internal lives, or other people.

In addition, a normal thought process makes it certain we never learn a single significant thing about our internal needs, potentials, or developmental tasks. One reason is that in normal life we just assume that if we get every external thing we want, then internal fulfillment and happiness will follow—automatically.  This is how we can pass through a lifetime and never clearly define or understand a single significant internal reality.

Another aspect of a normal thought process that kills any possibility of understanding, is that we are taught in school to first reduce complex realities to simple conclusions, or judgments—and then we explain and justify our simplistic conclusions and judgments.  We learn to apply this constrictive process to every issue in life—external and internal.

One consequence of normal thought is that in reducing the complexity of real-life to fit our simplistic process, we distort and pervert reality, which makes it impossible to even understand the complexity of our external tasks and problems, much less the more subtle internal needs, potentials, and developmental tasks.

In stark contrast, a conscious purpose and thought process expands our minds, so now we can take-in and understand the complexity of real life—both internal and external.  With a conscious purpose we want to understand, rather than control. Even without mastering the conscious thought process, this alone changes everything.

For instance, with a normal purpose to control, we inevitably want to avoid pain and insure pleasantness.  By contrast, with a conscious purpose to understand, we want to learn from pain and pleasure.  Once we want to learn, we have something to gain from both pain and pleasure, so now we no longer want control—we want understanding.

A conscious purpose, or desire to understand provides the emotional source for all mental and emotional development.  A conscious thought process provides the mental tools we need to fulfill this purpose and acquire a deep understanding of ourselves and life.

The heart of a conscious thought process is the same as the scientific method—that is, we first learn how to accurately observe the facts underlying each event, thought, feeling, pain or pleasure. Then, we ask questions to explore the facts to determine what they mean.  Finally, we form a hypothesis about what is true and needed and experiment to see if our hypothesis is true, needs to be revised, or just thrown out so we can start over.

Following a conscious thought process we learn to expand our understanding to fit the complexity of real-life, rather than constrict life to fit the narrow funnel created by a normal thought process. 

A conscious purpose to understand, backed-up by a conscious thought process, prepares us to acquire the information and develop the skills and awareness necessary to master every need, potential, and developmental task.  In the process, we learn how to express love, pursue truth, experience and create beauty, and develop wisdom.   

Changing from the normal to a conscious purpose and thought process is just the first step—then we need to work, and sometimes be willing to suffer, to clearly define each and every need, potential and developmental task.  Clear definitions that are specific, experiential, and consciously memorized are needed as a foundation for learning how to feed, fulfill, and complete our internal needs, potentials, and developmental tasks.

Thirty years of experience has taught me that without changing from a normal to conscious purpose and thought process it is impossible to take even one significant step down the road toward mental and emotional development—so this first step is critical.

While this first step is critical—it is still just the first step!  Then, we must pursue the truth of ordinary human life, no matter how painful, frightening, happy or sad.  To get started—my books, videos, workshops and individual sessions offer a clearly lit path, but each person must walk the path alone, and verify for herself thru daily experience the definitions, insights, skills and awareness that I provide.

It is important to observe that normal life is externally-based. This means the best we can get with a normal purpose and thought process is a materially successful and pleasant life, but we cannot acquire the internal development necessary to create lasting happiness, build intimate long-term romantic relationships, raise a child with a complete self-worth, or create an internally satisfying and meaningful professional life.

It is also important to notice, by simply observing the millions of people who clearly have external success without internal development, that we need to master internal and external needs and potentials if we want to understand life’s mysteries, and become complete within the space provided by one small lifespan.

In these first seven blogs, I offer a true gateway to mental and emotional development. Now, you have enough information to determine if internal development is something that appeals to you, or if you are already all that you need to be, just the way you are!  Either choice is fine, it has simply been my job to give you an option that heretofore in human history has not been offered.  Take care. PH