STUDY NOTES

1. The term transformation has interestingly parallel meanings in mathematics, in the physical sciences, and in human change.

A transformation is, literally, a forming over, a restructuring.

2. Mathematical transforms, for example, convert a problem into new terms so that it can be solved.

3. In the physical sciences, a transformed substance has taken on a different nature or character, as when water becomes ice or steam.

4. And of course, we speak of the transformation of people specifically the transformation of consciousness.

In this context, consciousness does not mean simple waking awareness. Here it refers to the state of being conscious of one's consciousness. You are keenly aware that you have awareness.

In effect, this is a new perspective that sees other perspectives--a paradigm shift.

5. Significantly, ancient traditions describe transformation as new seeing. Their metaphors are of light and clarity. They speak of insight, vision. Teilhard (de Chardin) said that the aim of evolution is

"ever more perfect eyes in a world in which there is always more to see."

6. Most of us go through our waking hours taking little notice of our thought processes: how the mind moves, what it fears, what it heeds, how it talks to itself, what it brushes aside; the nature of our hunches; the feel of our highs and lows; our misperceptions. For the most part we eat, work, converse, worry, hope, plan, make love, shop—all with minimal thought about how we think.

7.The beginning of personal transformation is absurdly easy. We only have to pay attention to the flow of attention itself.

Immediately we have added a new perspective. Mind can then observe its many moods, its body tensions, the flux of attention, its choices and impasses, hurting and wishing, tasting and touching.

8. In mystical tradition, the mind-behind-the-scenes, the part that watches the watcher is called the Witness. Identifying with a wider dimension than our usual fragmented consciousness, this center is freer and better informed.

...his wider perspective has access to universes of information processed by the brain at an unconscious level, realms we usuallycan't penetrate because of static or control from the surface mind— what Edward Carpenter called "the little, local self."

9. A mind not aware of itself -- ordinary consciousness is like a passenger strapped into an airplane seat, wearing blinders, ignorant of the nature of transportation, the dimension of the craft, its range, the flight plan, and the proximity of other passengers.

10. The mind aware of itself is a pilot. True, it is sensitive to flight rules, affected by weather, and dependent on navigation aids, but still vastly freer than the "passenger" mind. Anything that draws us into a mindful, watchful state has the power to transform, and anyone of normal intelligence can undertake such a process. Mind, in fact, is its own transformative vehicle, inherently prepared to shift into new dimensions if only we let it. Conflict, contradiction, mixed feelings, all the elusive material that usually swirls around the edges of awareness, can be reordered at higher and higher levels. Each new integration makes the next easier.

11. This consciousness of consciousness, this witness level,is sometimes referred to as a "higher dimension," an expression that has often been misunderstood. Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl pointed out that no moral judgment is implied: A higher dimension is simply a more inclusive dimension.

If, for example, you take a two-dimensional square and extend it vertically so that it becomes a three- dimensional cube, then you may say that the square is included in the cube.... Between the various levels of truth there can be no mutual exclusiveness, no real contradiction, for the higher includes the lower.

THE WAYS WE CHANGE

12. There are four basic ways in which we change our minds where we get new and conflicting information.

The easiest and most limited of these we might call change by exception.

Our old belief system remains intact but allows for a handful of anomalies, the way an old paradigm tolerates a certain number of odd phenomena that hang around its edges before the breakthrough to a larger, more satisfying paradigm.

13. An individual who engages in change by exception may dislike all members of a particular group, except one or two. He may consider psychic phenomena nonsense yet still believe that his great aunt's dreams came true. These are dismissed as "the exceptions that prove the rule" instead of the exceptions that disprove the rule.

Incremental change occurs bit by bit, and the individual is not aware of having changed.

Then there is

pendulum change, the abandonment of one closed and certain system for another.

14. The hawk becomes a dove, the disenchanted religious zealot becomes an atheist, the promiscuous person turns into a prude and vice versa, all the way around. Pendulum change fails to integrate what was right with the old and fails to discriminate the value of the new from its overstatements. Pendulum change rejects its own prior experience, going from one kind of half-knowing to another.

15. Change by exception, incremental change, and pendulum change stop short of transformation. The brain cannot deal with conflicting information unless it can integrate it. One simple example: If the brain is unable to fuse double vision into a single image, it will eventually repress the signals from one eye. The visual cells in the brain for that eye then atrophy, causing blindness. In the same way, the brain chooses between conflicting views. It represses information that does not fit with its dominant beliefs.

16.Unless, of course, it can harmonize the ideas into a powerful synthesis. That is paradigm change—transformation.

It is the fourth dimension of change: the new perspective, the insight that allows the information to come together in a new form or structure. Paradigm change refines and integrates. Paradigm change attempts to heal the delusion of either-or, of this-or -that.

17. In many ways, it (paradigm change) is the most challenging kind of change because itrelinquishes certainty. It allows for different interpretations from different perspectives at different times.

18. Change by exception says,

"I'm right, except for ."

Incremental change says,

"I was almost right, but now I'm right."

Pendulum change says,

"I was wrong before, but now I'm right."

Paradigm change says,

"I was partially right before, and now I'm a bit more partially right."

19. In paradigm change we realize that our previous views were only part of the picture and that what we know now is only part of what we'll know later.

20. Change is no longer threatening. It absorbs, enlarges, enriches. The unknown is friendly, interesting territory. Each insight widens the road, making the next stage of travel, the next opening, easier.

21. Change itself changes, just as in nature, evolution evolves from a simple to a complex process. Every new occurrence alters the nature of those to follow, like compound interest.