Dr. Paul Scheele and Bill Harris created this paraliminal to help you shift how you make meaning by stepping back from habitual thinking patterns. It draws on dissipative-structure theory and Theory U, using cultivated observation and small incremental actions. Scheele points to the Berlin Wall, apartheid's end, and the civil rights movement as proof that radical change starts with tiny, repeated shifts in perception.
Chapters
All right, we are ready to go. Welcome aboard. Here we are. Thank you. James, good to see you.
It's wonderful to have you here on Zoom, as well as all of you have joined me here on Facebook Live. Good to be with you and happy to share with you a paralympical that I created with Bill Harris, the person who started Centerpoint Research and the one who created holosync technology, which is built into every one of the parallel.
This concept that he and I talk about is based on the work of Priggian's model of dissipative structures, if you want to get into it in more detail. But the idea is that what happens in our lives is we create certain ways of looking at life. We see the same things. We don't see the. We don't see the world with fresh eyes. One of the key concepts of human transformation is a shift in meaning making. A shift in the way we make meaning about the. The way we're looking at the world. This is a shift from looking through a lens to looking at the lens we've been looking through. And this para liminal called Fresh Start is a way of actually giving yourself that opportunity, an opportunity to observe, an opportunity to witness and your life all of your previous assumptions, all of the beliefs, all of the perceptions that have held your life in place as it is. Not only that, but also reflecting on many of the frustrations, the hesitancies, the fears, the worries, not just about what's going on now, but also what might happen in the future. And when we can come to the threshold of our life's experience.
When we can peer over the edge and see with fresh eyes, begin to observe our lives anew, observe our lives from a perspective that is known as a fair witness. Not a critic, not a judge, but someone who is authentically witnessing the world in experiencing a sense of awe, sense of wonder, a sense of acceptance, appreciation, kindness towards ourselves and others, and a sense of love. And when we do that, all of the thousands and thousands of moments each day become opportunities to move beyond those previous thresholds. So when we think about the goals that we have for ourselves could be the goal that we might have for this day, or a longer arc of a goal that we're attempting to live into, to create the life that we choose. The one thing that we always do is we bring our previous mental model, the mental model that we've created up until now.
And when we can only look to the future from the perspectives or the lenses that we've created or have been given, then what we're always going to see is more of the same.
In order to start anew, to start fresh today, we need to be able to observe in a way that's unfettered by past perceptions. We need to be able to see as fair witness an opportunity that presents itself. And when we do, we look to our future from a place of greater opportunity and resourcefulness. Now, what's interesting about this particular para liminal is that I developed it with Bill Harris prior to the work that I did for my doctoral dissertation where I studied something called Theory U. And the idea of observing and sensing, to be able to let go and let come new perspectives and insights, was something that I delved into in quite a bit of detail during my doctoral research. So I'm very excited every time I listen to this because it just resonates with so much scholarship as well as so many centuries of understanding human consciousness through traditions of meditation and observation. You know, when you think about it, if we just had enough time to sit and observe, to observe our lives with fresh eyes, to observe the universe, to keep track, just to notice.
Notice what it is that's arriving and showing up.
What would we learn from the universe that's right here? You know, I've traveled to a place called Chichen Itza. It's the place where the cipher zero was discovered. It's a mathematical concept that they didn't have in the West.
It was the peoples of this North American continent thousands of years ago who did the observations of the universe, tracked the stars. Can you imagine if generations of people would spend all day long devoted to just observing? What would we learn? What would we learn from our own breath that would help us understand that we're connected to the infinite at every moment in time, and that each new thought is an opportunity to create the world, to create our lives anew. Remember seeing a.
An interview with somebody when the Berlin Wall came down? You know, there's so many people who had protested the Berlin Wall for so many years, and it was inconceivable that it would ever come down in spite of all their protests. And the day that it fell, the day that it did come down was a remarkable turning point in human history. And the same thing with the end of apartheid in South Africa.
When you think about British rule that occurred, when you think about civil rights movement, the passage of the Civil Rights Amendment, you know, these are things that people longed for, that people fought for, that people stood in vigil for. And when they finally arrived there, it was almost a surreal moment. So when you think about your goals, when you think about your highest calling, when you think about living in to the full expression of your life, and you think of it as being almost inconceivable that could occur, that it seems so far away.
Realize that it begins with the smallest unit of action that your brain and mind can produce. So what would that be? When you think about time.
You can think about a successful life as a series of successful years. And a successful year is a series of successful months. And a successful month is a series of successful weeks and a successful week. This week is a series of successful days and a successful day Today.
Series of successful hours.
Minutes, seconds, moments. And what's the smallest unit of time?
Smallest unit of time is a single thought. Because as long as we could conceptualize a smaller unit of time.
Nanosecond, as long as we could conceptualize.
Exists. And so the smallest unit of time, the smallest action you could take, is a single thought.
One of the things that I love about this particular paralyminal and Bill Harris's life of work and helping people make life transformations is so supported not only by observation and scholarship, but by lived experience. If you are a meditator, you understand that you can bring about a shift in your own state. Be it your mindset, be it your emotions.
Be it your physical experience or your mental experience, this moment is an opportunity to create the life that you dreamed of. A fresh start is available to you this day and every day, this hour, every moment. A fresh start. You don't have to reproduce the frustrations and fears of the past. You can step up to this threshold of this moment and begin creating your life as you choose it to be. Thanks very much for being here. Great to be able to chat with you. Have a spectacular rest of the day and we'll see you in our next session. Peace and blessings. Bye for now.
