Blog of Collective Intelligence

Hi George,

Much of your CI resonates well. We have been pioneering P2C (person-to-computer)Dialogue. There are three parts. CI around the codification of the dialogue (decision trees) that generates automatically webservices; usage of the webservices with different front ends designed to influence bahaviour, decisioning and outcomes; realtime recording of the dialogue for automated reporting of metrics, patterns and flows. This creates insights that lead to fast changes to the dialogue scripts.

By examining the codification, usage and measurement of P2C Dialogue has accelerated dramatically CI in severl different fields.

Freddie

TOP-DOWN YOGA

The quiet little movements of Top-Down Yoga automatically shift a person’s primary method of support from thinking to feeling. There’s nothing wrong with thinking but feeling is better for assessing physical safety and balance. Moreover, a mind relieved of these preoccupations becomes clearer and more still. I believe that this shift is one of the goals of most meditative practices, much of martial arts, yoga and even religion, since it entails the practical application of relying on a higher power. The good thing is that such reliance does not really require faith as it makes itself palpably manifest almost from the get-go. What is does require is the looking for it. Top-Down Yoga is a pretty damned good place to start. Not-coincidentally, a sense of unshakeable strength opens the heart. There’s nothing wrong with the world that loving it can’t cure, especially that interior world where we’re stuck with our hurts and diminishments. Choosing invincible receptivity changes everything.

From the Rolfing® perspective of Deborah Stucker, Advanced Certified Rolfer, originator of a Direct Electromagnetic Approach.

oOo

Dear Friends:

At a time when awakening and consciousness must necessarily play a part in the spiritual, political, ecological and economic transformation of the planet, the most useful thing we can have is a simple and effective tool to put us in our "highest mind" in the course of daily living. Lorin Kiely has develop an elegant process for doing just that which he calls "Top-Down Yoga." Top Down Yoga -- called that because it involves subtle and powerful exercises done "from the neck up" -- activates what Dr.Stephen Porges calls the "Social Engagement System," the most advanced of all our human "brains." Not only does this system allow us to "read" the facial expressions and other subtle cues in human communication, but it is the gateway to the kinds of deep meditations and spiritual abilities that have been the province of yogis and other spiritual adepts. The beauty of Top Down Yoga is that anyone can learn to do it, and anyone can benefit.

In order to share these practices with people worldwide -- and positively impact the entire human "field" on the planet -- Lorin envisions what he calls the Harmonic Continuum as an ongoing context for embodying these practices so that we fulfill our true "human potential."

Based on the highly-successful and powerful meditations done nearly 20 years ago as part of the Harmonic Convergence, these simple emboidment practices offer a new way to impact the "morphic field" and the coherence of human consciousness. We envision Harmonic Continuum celebratory events which teach these new practices in the context of music, comedy and other performance. In a series of simulcast events, we seek to teach
individuals the art of self-regulation which transforms our dis-ease and awakens what is most primary -- "loving love and being in the service of life."

This new "technology" is not part of any "church" or organization such as TM, or part of some multi-level commercial venture, but an effective practice that is given to the world to use freely.

As Lorin will probably tell you himself, he learned and used these
techniques to heal completely from a devastating auto accident. He recently presented Top Down Yoga at a small group retreat, and the work was very well received. I found that doing these deceptively simple practices just a couple of times, relieved some low back and knee problems I was having, and added to my general well-being and clarity. I have now integrated the work into my daily practice, and am finding continuing benefits.

Lorin has been given this "gift" to share, and to do so he needs to have the resources to develop the media and teaching tools to gain maximum credibility. I highly recommend his work, and support him in his quest to bring this work to millions worldwide.

Steve Bhaerman, aka Swami Beyondananda
www.wakeuplaughing.com

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The Evolutionary 'Body' of our Humanity

Introduction

In his seminal text, The Self-Organizing Universe, Erick Jantsch refers to a metafluctuation in the 1960's that "rocked the world."  It was a time of grass roots movements: the awakening of awareness and concern in relation to the environment, rejection of the war in Vietnam and advocacy for domestic and international human rights. It was also a time of novelty. People felt free to explore alternative lifestyles, live in communes, do mind-expanding drugs and dance to rapidly evolving music that borrowed tone-scales and rhythms from around the world.  Eastern spirituality and the beginning of the Human Potential movement provided powerful new guiding images and social norms.
 
Jantsch saw several basic themes in those dynamic times:  “self-determination, self-organization and self-renewal… the recognition of a systemic connectedness over space and time of all natural dynamics…. the logical supremacy of processes over spatial structures… the role of fluctuation that renders the law of large numbers invalid and gives a chance to the individual and its creative imagination."

Looking back, it is easy to understand why the metafluctuation, which changed the world in some fairly radical ways, was dampened back into the existing paradigm. It simply did not have the coherence or necessary information to carry humanity over the threshold of the seemingly immutable values and beliefs of the Cartesian paradigm. Now, almost a half century later, we face differing trajectories for our future.  Indeterminacy reigns, the delicate balance of life on planet earth has been severely disrupted, our choices are unclear, our fate is uncertain.
If we are to find our way, we must go beyond the hydra-headed manifestations of our misconceptions, to tap into the common root of our environmental, spiritual, social, educational, economic, and political crises.  We must see our “seeing” to envision a viable future.
 
Human perception has evolved to disregard the flux of experience and the essential interconnectedness of all being in order to stabilize change and assign meaning to an objectified world from a subjective perspective.  Pascal observed that "the heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing." In order for evolution to continue, we must fend off our fear and mistrust of our inner experience and embrace our heart-centric neuroanatomical organization -- what the Tantrics saw as the seat of human consciousness. 
 
What follows is the beginnings of a strategy for every one of us to make this shift individually in the hope that, heart-by-human-heart, our collective evolution will save our planet from destruction and our lives from divisiveness and meaningless strife.

The Social Engagement System
And Top-Down Yoga

Recent understanding of a third branch of intelligence in the autonomic nervous system, by Dr. Stephen Porges and others, has led to the confirmation of a neurological basis for what Porges has termed “The Social Engagement System.”  This framework and other developments in the understanding of the biological underpinnings of human consciousness have led to the development of a user-friendly and precise method of beneficial self-regulation called Top-Down Yoga. This innovative tool for strengthening the Social Engagement System provides a means whereby people across social and political divides can overcome the many impediments they face to peace, economic and ecological viability and personal and cultural fulfillment. 
 
The gentle movements of Top-Down Yoga release constriction at key anatomical points to free the neuroanatomical structures of the Social Engagement System to operate at their best.  The ensuing chemical changes translate into a positive and dynamic state of consciousness.  Easy to learn and simple to perform, Top-Down Yoga can be used by anyone almost anywhere, sitting in a chair, standing or lying down. 

Here’s how it works:  the cranial nerves, identified as a part of the Social Engagement System, emerge from the brain stem. If the deep muscles of the neck are chronically tense, they become irritated and their function lacks adequate coherence to provide an alternative experience to separation and conflict.   By gently releasing these structures, changes in the the tissues and fluids of the body foster a felt sense of security and openness within the flux of the dynamically emerging universe.

The Social Engagement System is a synergistic functioning of five cranial nerves that coordinates and integrates head-turning, looking, listening, vocal communication and facial expression with cardiac output. Freed to function optimally, the SES works to ground the human experience and expression in love and social bonding. Dr. Jim Oschman states, "Social bonds" are scientifically described as a powerful form of learning regulated by long-lasting changes in the brain and endocrine system.  Regulation of cardiac output induces a positive state of stasis [immobilization] that conserves precious life energy and establishes the primacy of the warm-blooded current of heart 'consciousness' as the bodymind’s central organizing mechanism.  Top-Down Yoga works to unify the most primitive neurological organizations of the brainstem with the most evolutionarily advanced organization of the Social Engagement System.  It is an embodiment practice that encourages the optimal flow of cerebrospinal fluid while activating the potent neuropeptide "messenger molecules" that coordinate almost all physiological and emotional processes of the body at the cellular level. 

When the cranial nerves of the Social Engagement System are not functioning optimally, the nervous system becomes overloaded with messages from the structures of the reptilian brain, driving the whole toward dualistic thinking and mood collapse.  A large majority of humanity suffers from chronic stress, anxiety or depression.  The upward shift of neurological organization fostered by Top-Down Yoga transforms these conditions at their root level, generating an instantaneous shift towards the perception of wholeness and freedom from the chatter of lower brain dominance.  Most people feel immediately soothed and calmed.  Practiced with regularity, these feeling states become habitual and self-renewing. 
 
A new model for evolutionary advancement

The established model of the autonomic nervous system describes only two branches: the sympathetic and parasympathetic – a representation that has been shown to be incomplete.  A third branch of intelligence, appearing first in mammals, introduces an autonomic alternative beyond the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems, one that sparks and maintains the higher-level social functions of mammalian – and human – existence. 

Humanity, expressed individually, as society or as a species – as chronically stuck in a less-than-optimal autonomic state that compels competition and divisiveness -- simply lacks the resources of energy, awareness and inspiration necessary to adapt to internal or external challenge. 
 
Alternatively, we can come from a position of wholeness and connection.  We can merge without loss of individuality to collaborate creatively.  We are a field-like property of natural light that is the evolutionary ‘body’ of humanity. 

Top-Down Yoga directly activates the most potent, positive neurochemistry of human being.  The simple movements and postures of the practice create a novel context from which to explore one’s own experience.  The results are individual growth and evolution and the development of the collective wisdom.  Perhaps more invitingly, they also serve as an excellent aid to the rest and the equanimity of deep meditation.  Moreover, Top-Down Yoga offers the mind training necessary to embody dynamic wholeness. Perhaps, by using a practice that binds our primitive impulses together with our evolutionary potential, we may, in the words of Dane Rudhyar, "begin again together."

The Harmonic Continuum

The Harmonic Continuum or the source of all energy and matter is always here, always now --always the same yet always pulsating with the force of creation. Stillness, not action, funds our very existence, the radiant source of all. We can access the primal lifeforce and our own healing with our own bodies, not from any distant outside operator.  The same energy that manifests and sustains the Cosmos can be found within us, in our own bodies. We are the void. We are dynamic creation.

The Harmonic Continuum was conceived as an ever-evolving, ongoing movement supporting new social applications springing from our emergent, collective wisdom. Perhaps “Harmonic Continuum" is a code name for reality-as-such. It can embody the ground, path and fruition of our evolutionary potential.  The initial inspiration for the idea of Harmonic Continuum is the promotion of simple practices of self-regulation that take advantage of our neurological organization for optimal human potential. 
 
With any luck, conscious embodiment of the Social Engagement System will prompt people to expand their enjoyment of and intuitive commitment to the world around us.  Please explore www.climatecrisis.org, the website for the film "An Inconvenient Truth", and the link to www.lauriedavid.com, for an understanding of the expanded role this kind of consciousness can achieve.   Engaging the Social Engagement System at the level of the individual calls into play each person’s response to the environment and may, lets us hope, translate into a concerted effort to save the world politically and ecologically.
 
In an effort to create the world we would like to (and can) inhabit, Harmonic Continuum ceremonies can be created and conducted that will introduce powerful and coherent messages for collective understanding and action.  There is no doubt that we must develop the strength and rigor to collectively address the challenges we face in order to carry humanity over the threshold into a new autopoeitic landscape. Jim George's book, Asking For The Earth presents the view that ecological and spiritual crises are two sides of the same coin.  He equates global warming to spiritual crisis because the underlying cause for the neglect of the planet is the separation of “us and them” that has allowed us to stray from our own best interests.  Top-Down Yoga and Harmonic Continuum promise to bring the personal and extrapersonal dimensions of being together as a context for inspiring a global reinvention of social, educational, economic interaction.

The beauty of  the Top-Down Yoga practices is that each person, in the context of family, office, school, eldercare facility, prison or peace negotiation, can draw upon the its benefit to transcend stress, anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome.  Let’s start with our house and move towards the White House, to move ourselves collectively forward towards an ecologically viable future that offers maximum benefit to all. 
 
Shift-in Action

A dream is a wish that your heart makes.

The success of the film, What the Bleep Do We Know demonstrates the passion of millions to understand the relationship between frontier science, spirituality and social dynamics.  We can use both Top-Down Yoga and the Harmonic Continuum to create participation.  Let’s celebrate our humanity through the acknowledgement of our own bodies to inspire action worldwide.  We can create events that can be broadcast in realtime and disseminated all over the globe to consist of the simple physical practices of Top-Down Yoga, music, dance and comedy to tap into our own unique social engagement neurology and bring its awakened power into dynamic, collective action. 

We in the nascent Harmonic Continuum envision a present in which film, documentaries, dramas and comedies set fire to our collective imagination and encourage each person’s active participation in new social, environmental, scientific, political and economic action.  The key is access to the openness, freedom and coherence of simply being. We must seek, as Illya Prigogine says, "a new order through fluctuation"
 
Erick Jantsch states, "Evolution is basically open. It determines its own dynamics and direction." If consciousness is left open to create itself dynamically as a form of poetry -- as opposed to a straight-forward narrative with its hierarchies and limitations -- it “not only restores strength, but also creates the possibility of recognizing and bringing into play ever new… developmental lines."
 
Embodied openness surely aligns us with our true nature.  We can use our rich, if potentially divisive, neurology to surmount our [you had a word for it but I deleted it] and imposed mechanizations and allow us to nurture ourselves and our environment.  Let us embrace the wisdom of fractal imagery.  Let us begin locally, to effect globally.  Why not embrace the simple and scientifically validated techniques to do this now. 

Lorin Kiely
topdownyoga@gmail.com
www.topdownyoga.50megs.com