The Necessity of Emotional Authenticity: Gabriel’s Deteriorating Sequence in The Dead

The Necessity of Emotional Authenticity: Gabriel’s Deteriorating Sequence in The Dead

 

James Joyce, 1882-1941

John Kuczmarski (John Thomas aka John Kooz)

December 1, 2004

Professor Soderholm

The Necessity of Emotional Authenticity: Gabriel’s Deteriorating Sequence in The Dead

If you were born blind, were unable to see your entire life, and then suddenly could see for five seconds, what would happen?  Imagine if, during this brief blip of visual illumination, you saw all the colors, hues, and the entire visual spectrum while walking in a forest, but then went blind after that five-second revelation? Gabriel Conroy, the protagonist of “The Dead” experiences a revelation similar to this.  Gabriel Conroy is a humble man – perhaps too humble. He is an emotionally sensitive bookworm who welcomes books more than money and “loves to feel the covers and turn over the pages of newly printed books” (1594).  His sensitized, introverted personality is ill suited for the brusque and boisterous (especially with the presence of Freddy Malins) environment at the Morkan’s dance party. Throughout “The Dead” James Joyce plants triggers that build in stages, showing Gabriel’s sensitivity, that eventually culminate with an epiphany, where the emotionally battered Gabriel chooses to recognize himself with members of the dead.  He is like the blind man, who, after spending his entire life blind, can see for five seconds but then chooses to go back to sleep.  The fact that Gabriel had this choice of choosing blindness (death) or illumination (life) was the result of emotional distance and disparity.  The reason why he chose to reside and reunite with the dead was because of a shattered confidence, distance from the festivities, the presence of a gathering shadow of doubt around him.  Throughout the short story, Gabriel Conroy has an over-reliance on external sources of confidence and doesn’t produce enough self-reassurance originating from an internal source.  

At the opening of the story, as Gabriel is removing his goloshes, a  congenial conversation with Lily goes horribly awry.  In their brief dialogue Gabriel inquires about her school, learns that she has finished and responds, “I suppose we’ll be going to your wedding one of these fine days with your young man, eh?” (1588).  This causes Lily to respond with “great bitterness: ‘The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.’” (1588).   It is obvious Gabriel has unintentionally offended Lily with a comment that she interprets to be patronizing.  Instead of tactfully explaining what he means, he emphasizes the communicational faux pas, exacerbates the squabble and furthers the distance between their socio-economic statuses by giving her a tip.  What is the psychological consequence of fouling up this conversation and being somewhat scolded by Lily?  Emotional disparity from the party and loss of confidence is the consequence.  Gabriel’s confidence in communicating is smashed.  Immediately after he darts up the stairs to evade Lily and join the party, he distances himself from the festive activity: “he waited outside the drawing-room door until the waltz should finish…he was still discomposed by the girl’s bitter and sudden retort.  It had cast a gloom over him” (1589).  Not only is he emotionally removed, but also he is psychologically discomposed by Lily’s bitter response.  Also, the negative ramifications of Lily’s compliment initiate a building gloom that leaves him disparately disconnected from the party.  Because he unsuccessfully communicates with Lily, a gloom is cast over him, shattering his confidence. 

There is a lyric from a song by the Goo-goo Dolls that goes “I don’t want the world to see me because I don’t think that they’ll understand”.  This fear of other people not understanding you has infected Gabriel and he suffers from it.  He pictures that he “would only make himself ridiculous by quoting poetry to them which they could not understand...They would think he would be airing his superior education”(1589). It is clear that Gabriel fears a replay of what happened earlier, where he untactfully said the marital expectation comment to Lily, and now assumes the other party-goers will not understand him either. Furthermore, the narrator recognizes Gabriel’s smashed confidence: “he would fail with them just as he had failed with the girl in the pantry…his whole speech…an utter failure” (1589). Standing outside the drawing-room shows the physical disparity and expecting his speech to be incomprehensible shows Gabriel’s emotional dissociation and lack of confidence. It is clear the genesis of Gabriel’s brooding gloom and crumbling confidence, which distances him form the party, has commenced.

Instead of recognizing his false assumptions (that all of his conversations at the party would now be incomprehensible or misconstrued) Gabriel continues to make them, which doesn’t prevent, but perpetuates, the deterioration of his confidence.  The next stage that Joyce tactfully plants to show how Gabriel’s shattered confidence, which leads to his emotional separation, occurs with Miss Ivors on the dance floor.  While dancing, Miss Ivors and Gabriel engage in a discussion about Irish tradition and, once again, the introverted Gabriel is unable to emotionally express himself.  Miss Ivors questions his patriotism and ties with Ireland: “Haven’t you your own land to visit,’ continued Miss Ivors, ‘that you know nothing of, your own people, and your own country?’” (1595).  It is clear that this comment is somewhat confrontational, but, being overly-sensitized to it, Gabriel blurts out “to tell you the truth…I’m sick of my own country, sick of it” (1596).  When Miss Ivors asks the poor conversationalist, Gabriel, to expound, and he can’t, she mocks him by saying, “of course, you’ve no answer” (1596).  He then hides his agitation “by taking part in the dance with great energy” (1596).  During this bicker Gabriel doesn’t express his opinions nor his irritation, and, instead, buries them.  Because he emotionally buries his feelings, he ends up relating with the physically buried dead, instead of the living, during his epiphanic moment at the end of the play.  

Obviously, the combination of Gabriel’s inability to express his ideas and Miss Ivors caustic response tarnish his self-assurance once again.  As a result of his deteriorated esteem he retreats to isolation, emotionally distancing himself form the party by sitting “in a remote corner of the room where Freddy Malins’ mother was sitting” (1596).  Gabriel is crossing all boundaries now; he generalizes and assumes that he has been a communicational failure with the youthful Lily and the middle-aged Miss Ivors, so now he tries his tongue with the elderly: old Mrs. Malins!  Because the conversation with Mrs. Malins is simply another evasion (like when he avoided the conflict with Lily’s interpretation of his comment by running up the stairs) it is unsuccessful.  During this conversation “Gabriel hardly heard what she said” (1596), when Mrs. Malins was describing a fishing excursion,.  The shattered confidence causes Gabriel to emotionally run away, which distances him from the party to such an extreme that he can’t even listen to Mrs. Malins.  

These three stages have placed Gabriel in such a denigrated state that he cannot even bear to stay at the party.  “How pleasant it would be to walk out alone,” (1597) he says, “how much more pleasant it would be [at Wellington Monument] that at the supper-table” (1597).  So far we have seen Gabriel’s incapacity to have a successful conversation destroy his confidence and distance himself from the party with Lily.  He becomes even more agitated with Miss Ivors, and his irritation builds to an unbearable amount with Mrs. Malins.  By the time he reaches his fourth conversational confrontation and can’t express himself, his irritation boils over to anger.  

When he finds out his wife, Gretta, has been reminiscing about an old love, “A dull anger began to gather again at the back of his mind…and the dull fires of his lust began to glow angrily in his veins” (1612).  He is really charged up here; even his veins pump angry blood.  Instead of expressing his agitation in the fact that his wife loved Michael Fury (a very witty name considering the infuriating reaction it evokes from Gabriel) more than he, Gabriel buries his rage.  By now, the infuriation has built up to such a huge level that it converts to overwhelming doubt: 

“Gabriel felt humiliated by the failure of his irony…he saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealizing about his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.” (1613) 

This is the epiphanic climax where he sees himself as the battered, emotionally sensitive person who doubts his belief to such a degree that he labels them, clownish.  Even his voice is different after this realization: “his voice when he spoke was humble and indifferent” (1613).  That moment was the time when he needed to turn it around; he needed to express his well-justified irritation about his wife appearing to have loved another.  Instead, of choosing to emotional resurrect himself through authentic expression, Gabriel continues to use his ineffectively drab mode of communicating and, as a result of not seizing this crucial opportunity for change, is completed terrorized when he hears his wife say that Michael Furey died for her: “a vague terror seized Gabriel at this answer…some impalpable and vindictive being was coming against him, gathering forces against him in its vague world” (1613).  So instead of choosing to express himself, he negates the opportunity for emotional salvation, and he feels vague ambiguity.  This impalpable and vindictive force is his own shattered self-confidence and his world is so vague because of his emotional distance from it.  When he understands this, the shadow of doubtful gloom completely begins to subdue him.

 Towards the end of the story, after being glazed over by the realization, the epiphanic moment reaches the apex where the decision to emotionally return to life, or remain with the dead, greets him when “generous tears feels Gabriel’s eyes” (1615). His interpretation of himself has already deteriorated from being a sensitive person who idealizes about his ludicrous ideas amongst “vulgarians”, to being meekly held captive by a vindictive force in a vague world.  By the end of the story, Gabriel feels “his soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead” (1615) and “his own identity was fading into a grey impalpable world” (1615).  The shadow of gloom that was sparked by maladaptive conversational skills, leading to lack of emotional integrity and confidence, has completely buried Gabriel and he has emotionally and spiritually joined the dead.  Gabriel’s despondent situation could have been stopped at any time – from initially having a confrontation with Lily to the other extreme of feeling lost in a vindictively vague world -- if he had chosen to seize his emotional reactions, authenticate them, and tactfully respond with sincerity.  The crucial point here is that Gabriel had a choice, but denied himself the opportunity because of lack of emotional authenticity.  From Gabriel’s downward-spiraling sequence of events in “The Dead” Joyce shows us the crucial necessity of empowering ourselves and authenticating our emotions in every context and that communicative Carpe diem can occur, and must occur, in the “now”.

Works Cited

Joyce, James.  The Dead. The Norton Anthology of World 

Masterpieces; Ed 7,. Vol. 1. Ed. Sarah Lawall. New York: Norton & Company, 1999.

James Joyce: the Brazen Head. 

http://www.themodernword.com/joyce/joyce_biography.htm l 

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Some Excerpts of Beginning Fiction Writing I Did

John Kuczmarski

Beginning Fiction Writing

Beginnings 250 (Perspective w/light)

June 7, 2005

Rekindle the Rapport

The reflection of the office lamp on the window made it nearly impossible for Rebecca to see out into the ghostly summer night.  Not that she was concerned with the arid desert evening; she was fervently pecking away at the conclusion to her “Metaphors of Sexuality in American Society” thesis.  Because there was no way for her to see out as he looked in, the one-way window transparency did, however, benefit her colleague, the spying Samuel Gervin, whom she knew before she moved to the vacant desert of Montana.  His hesitation before entering wasn’t voyeuristic.  Instead, Samuel -- nervous about rekindling any relationship, be it business-related or long-time friendship -- had paused in awe of the strokes of undulating reminiscence that bombarded his conscience when he saw her assiduously typing away.

Samuel and Rebecca had been friends for almost all of the two-year experience at the small Stone Child College near Box Elder, Montana.  Samuel had always considered their relationship as something more than companionship, but was complacent with their rapport, which was generated by doing field research for their ecological final, studying for finals, and attending most classes together.  The waves of college memories -- from getting lost in the Appalachians during their research project, to surviving the car crash on I-191 near Harlowton, to Rebecca’s graceful smile of gratitude whenever he reminded her to take her insulin – almost made him dizzy with glee to see her.  Taking a deep breath, he balanced one crutch against his hefty body, opened the screen door, inched his broken leg inside the doorframe, and was about to rap upon the window-pane of the door, but paused.  An uncertain, icy panic besieged him; “maybe I shouldn’t visit her,” he thought at the last minute.  “Maybe she doesn’t even want to see me in the middle of her work”.  Too late -- the squeak of the screen door had alerted Rebecca, who twisted in her chair, squinting out into the dim night to determine the source of the disturbance.  In an embarrassed fluster, Samuel simultaneously realized his impending obligation to, now, knock and enter and his desire to bolt away from the porch and abandon the visit entirely.  He awkwardly wheeled around his body, wrenching his leg forward, and rapped twice on the door, only to snag his crutch on the screen door, tripped, and fell into a pathetic heap on the porch just as Rebecca opened the door.

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Startled, and suddenly frightened, by the alarming clamor that had just assaulted her door, Rebecca pounced out of her chair and then froze, uncertain if she should scream and call the police or boldly confront her intruder.  Despite their differences, Rebecca and Samuel did meet ends on one aspect of their behavior, indecision.  And much to her chagrin, just as stalling between the choices of knocking or fleeing had resulted in Samuel's pathetic collapse outside the door, Rebecca now stumbled between her two approaches and flung open the door and screamed blindly into her intruder.  Samuel, who had by that time gotten up, collected himself, and was about to attempt to re-enter, caught the full blast of her uproarious siren of a scream head on and tripped back again into a winded heap on the floor in front of Rebecca.

"Who the fuck do you - Oh my god.  Samuel!  Samuel, are you alright?  Oh my god! What the fuck are you -- ?  You scared me to death.  Were you trying to scare me?"

"What the fucking hell do you think I was trying to do?  I was trying to visit you!  Just popping by to remember the old times, you know!  Did you have to scream in my face?"

Rebecca, laughing, "Oh my god!   Well it's great to see you, Samuel.  I think this break is what I needed.  Damn, you sure pick the craziest times and entrances though.  What the hell happened to your leg?  Why are you in crutches?"  Then in a playful, mocking tone, Rebecca said, "Oh you poor thing....snooby dooby wooby..." 

"Humph.  Well you certainly recollected my "love" for babytalking."  Samuel muttered rolling his eyes.  "Help me up, will ya?"

Rebecca gave Samuel a hand, pulled him up, helped him regain his balance on his teetering stilts and he followed her into the house wedging himself in behind the screen door before it swung shut.

The Cure

A crescent sliver as sharp and as clear as Rinaldo had ever witnessed shone into the valley, illuminating the shadowy Peruvian forest.  “It must be the proximity to the equator,” Rinaldo thought, “that makes the moonbeams so crisp and vivid”.  As he headed back to the base camp, he buried his longing for the gems of civilization – a radio to hear the recent news of the Kennedy assassination, his Aztec history books to peruse, and a cool shave.  He suppressed his civilized desires because he knew that not only should he strive to take advantage of the richly immersive experience at the tropical rainforest of the Tambopato reserve, but he had no other option but to savor the 6-month-long commitment in the northern portion of the reserve, near the Bolivian border, along the eastern border of Peru.  Although Rinaldo was surrounded by throngs of ornithologists, studying “the world’s greatest diversity of bird life”, as the tour books read, his expedition revolved around botanical research.  This specific research had just recently discovered a chemical response to the endangered Carnero (Poulsenia armata) specimen.

Rinaldo had taken his sojourn away from the camp to overlook the peaceful forest, in order to temporarily escape the hullabaloo sparked by the recent findings. When he returned from his reflective respite, he found the base camp, despite it being past midnight, brewing with lively scientific commotion.  On a typical day the four canvas tents were stagnant abodes, housing typical laboratory equipment -- microscopes, samples of flora and fauna, maps of the Tambopata’s ecology, and mysterious substances contained in equally mysterious flasks.  The source of this midnight din revolved around one of these specific flasks.  Bubbling and frothing, fluid in the beaker containing a sample of the 100-foot Carnero tree had shifted from a translucent whitish hue to a crimson viscous liquid.  This chemical change meant the xylem of the Carnero tree had reacted with the AIDs virus strain, indicating only one thing -- the tree had potential curative properties.

John Kuczmarski

Beginning Fiction Writing

Beginning 396 (Visual Images)

June 9, 2005

The Tidal Wave

“Watch out for the second loop – it’s vicious,” said Frederick with an air of experience to his African American brother, Fritz, who was masking his worry by fidgeting with his seatbelt.  Frederick timed the warning perfectly.  Immediately after he spoke, the coaster’s lap bar shot down, and the entire car lurched forward with a crank.  There was an instantaneous pause that gave Frederick just enough time to smoothly rotate his head to the right and boldly smile at his squirming, uneasy brother before the coaster train jolted out of the depot with a booming sound of explosive cranks and clinks, and the speed and urgency of a full-bladder toddler sprinting to the bathroom.

The enormous rush of fear and anticipation that had swelled up in Fritz, when he had been waiting in the depot, immediately purged out of him with a scream of exhilaration.  His eyes tearing with the speed, fighting the oncoming torrent of wind, he turned to the left to examine his adrenaline-junkie brother.  Frederick’s dark-skinned left arm was raised like he was hailing down a taxi at rush hour and the right arm clenched over his body as if wielding a crowbar.  Laughing at the intensity of the speed, he said, “Yeah, Chicago Six Flags! Can’t get this back in Tennessee! Can’t get this anywhere, but,” and he paused for Fritz to chime in, where both of them finished the sentence, “Heeerrreee!”  The two brothers both let out bellowing howls that were an octave above the cacophony of shouts and screams of the other passengers.  

The coaster swerved left and right, dipped and dived, whipping around its passengers like willow branches during a tornado.  Before beginning its plummeting descent, the roller-coaster reached its zenith and paused as if a plane stalling in mid-air.  A dead silence fell upon the passengers before their thrilled screams billowed out into a descending clamor of yells and shrieks as the coaster bulleted back to the station.

Because he had never been on a coaster before, and because of his older brother’s appreciation of the coaster, this ride felt like an initiation into adulthood on Fritz’s eighteenth birthday. He was exuberant from the rush, but more so from the satisfaction of weathering his storm of reluctance and connecting with a source of Frederick’s wild energy.

“Well, now you’re a ‘Tidal Wave’ veteran.”

“Yup, I checked that second loop.”

Want to Mate, Men and Women? Be Confident for a Change!

I stumbled across a flirting, date "tip". This was phrased as a tip and it was about self-touch. It detailed that if a woman is interested in a man, she will touch her chest, leg.

I know (because I've dated women and we've discussed how they don't subscribe to that) that some women do not touch themselves ad a part of their body and then expect a man to obsequiously sidle up to her because of HER romantic interest. And as a male, I personally don't subscribe to that either. Why? Because the times that I observe with my fairly advanced body-language observation skills that a woman is doing some peculiar array of gestures and contortions that she is convinced is supposed to "express her romantic interest" (when in fact walking up to me and saying "I'm romanticlaly interested in you, want to chat?" would be the most phenomenal turn-on possible!) I was repulsed with how little confidence such a person has.

I guess my question is, doesn't that seem awfully reflective of the woman not having confidence? What's stopping the woman from boldly going up to a man that she's interested in and introducing herself? Why must she do this bizarre courtship ritual where SHE touches her self because SHE is interested in a man and instead of acting on HER romantic interest, she feels imprisoned in a set of cultural customs to passively "lure" her sycophantic romantic "prey" over to her? What percentage of women subscribe to such nonsense? I have absolute certainty that it's no 100% because I've met women who laugh at those tactics. What's frightening is that I think the percentage is quite high. In many ways, doesn't this passive, low confidence, indirect role that such a high percentage of women play ultimately condemn their outspokenness, their directness, their assertiveness in the relaitonship?

As homo sapiens were consciously are endowed with teh capacity to NOT resort to bizarre ritualistic courtship mating drills like the ones birds resort to that involve a flashing of colorful feathers and an exotic dance. As humans, we have the capacity to see the inherent ridiculousness in and the confining ramifications of courtship "drills" and even gender roles. And with our consciousness, we can live more full and complete and more importantly, more direct with our emotions in a way that relinquishes us from "moratorium of hte unknown".

"Club-winged Manakins, Machaeropterus deliciosus, reveal that males produce sustained harmonic tones through interactions among oscillating secondary wing feathers" in a courtship ritual. As conscious primates, we have the capacity to choose to NOT display a certain tone and oscillate our arms to convey affection, interest, or attraction. Instead, we have the capacity as humans to walk up to a member of the opposite sex and simply say with words the Nature of our interest in them! Don't you think it's time we've evolved? That it's time to relinquish antiquated courtship rituals that are literally inherent to a more primitive generation?

>>>>>>>>>>>


Doesn't that seem so unnecessarily confusing? I've seen women doing this and truly, honeslty, I thought to myself "that woman has an itch on her chest OR she's indirectly in a very muddled manner trying to get my attention because she's romantically interested in me.

I'm not a taxi driver! If woman touches her self romantically with the intention of "hailing me over for courtship", I don't stop and say "where do you want to go?" Because (to continue the metaphor) if she's failing to be direct, why should I -- HOW could I -- possibly be direct in my response to HER romantic interest?

Both woman and men need to take more confident ownership of their romantic interests.

Wait, do a lot of women SERIOUSLY suffer from the same low-confidence problems as men? Men do the Mystery Method etc PUA workshops because their confidence is low. I can see no different between That type of low confidence and the type of low confidence that causes a woman to passively touch a part of her body instead of having the confidence to approach a man with something are identical!

For me, personally, if I'm interested in a woman, I'll tell her. Or i'll directly ask what she seeks in a relationship (romance, friendship, merely chatting). I've just wasted too many years of my life stuck in the moratorium of the unknown because myself and the woman Both lacked hte confidence to address what kind of relationship was present.

So let's use this as an awakening to just boldly and confidently take ownership of our romantic interests. Why not? We have the capacity to do that as humans, right?!

>>>>>>

It's literally disgusting to me that people believe this rubbish. Utter, rubberish. This is preposterous! "Women are more in touch with feelings"? Please! Plenty of sensitive men out there that beg to differ. Men are better at 3-d perceptibility? Please, I'm sure there's some brilliant spatial designers that are female. ALL of these differences between men and women SIMPLY are the result of LOW confidence. Insecure males and insecure females flee and flock to the "Well, Thta'ts why he doesn't understand....our brains our different!" or the "Well, that's why she didn't communicate well...our brains are different" and then burrow themselves further into ignorance. Believing that men and female minds are different is -- it truly is -- a form of self-ridicule! It's ridiculing your own capacity to think as a human being by convincing yourself of the delusion that men and women are cognitively different. We're both the same species, we both have a need for sustanence, procreation, and shelter. Our brains cognitively function the exact same way. The "content" of what's in our brains and our personality and cultural background and personal perceptiosn of the world are undoubtedly different because there's so many different personalities and belief structures!! But to say that because one person has an XY chromosome and an other has an XX producing different reproductive systems, is in someway linked to the cognitive differences of the mind is truly and utterly preposterous! It's preposterous! Men and women have the same mind - a human mind!

It's truly foul and disgusting studies like these that perpetuate inequality in genders. These "false delusory trivias" are merely for the unconfident person to have ammunition in their ignorance and lack of confidence in dating in the first place!

Have you ever considered that there could be two reasons for a man or woman who have a romantic interest in each other to not date: 1) they're both too shy, timid, meek, and unconfident (this is about 95% of the reason why most of the time) or 2)they're both disgusted with how truly PUERILE the gender games have become!

Wanna Observe like Sherlock? Holmes' Elementary Meta-Strategy!

Holmes' Meta Strategy!
This is the transcription and reflection on Robert Dilts' Strategies of Genius.

Perception of Clusters of Details ---> Behavioral Observations + Environmental Observations ---> Inferences ---> Combinations of inferences ---> Conclusions

Cultural Assumptions & Facts are matched up with the observations to draw inferences, then the inferences are "compiled" to generate conclusions.

Why is Holmes Strategy so useful to learn?
Well, for one, Sherlock Holmes (although fictional) is the greatest observational-deducer probably ever to exist in our imaginations or out of it. The fact that he's fictional does not prevent his techniques from being genuine, applicable, and highly useful. The observational-deducing strategies used by Sherlock Holmes seriously fall in the category of something expansively NLP because it increases the options you have in life. You can (and will) draw these truthful, accurate conclusions seemingly from thin air. Yes, that is impressive and makes for a great trick, but also for your own awareness and heightened observational skills this is extremely potent. It's so valuabl eto understand how we go from submodality observations and asking the who, what, how, where, when (and sometiems why) questions to arrive at the causes and behavioral conditions and capabilities behind what we see. Wolves are notably more intelligent than dogs because of their 30% increased intelligence and heightened "observational learning". Observational learning means that they'll figure out how the cage they're in works, and can quickly escape than anything without observational learning. Similarly, learning and Applying Holmes meta-strategy for drawing deductive conclusions from heightened observations frees you and expands your life MUCH more than the person who does not use this strategy. Ultimately, by using and applying Holmes' filtering and questing and tying up observations with cultural assumptions, imaginations, and facts to reach inferecnes and then conclusions from the summation and formulaic equations of those inferences, you truly will lead a more liberated, more full, more complete life than someone who does not use these strategies. So learn on! :D

The fusion of cultural assumption & Fact with the observation is key and often the overlooked step.

If you see someone lightly hesitantly putting his hand on a woman's shoulder (observation), it's likely it's their first date (inference) because if they had gone on many dates, there likely would be no hesitation (cultural assumption)!

NLP Concepts utilized in Holmes' Strategy

Submodalities -- specifically visual acuity has been massively heightened and he ties in visual representation system observations with assumptions and facts to quickly create inferences

Logical Levels -- Holmes rapidly cycles through the logicals to quickly create awareness of how, who, what, when, where, and why someone did capabilities, identity, behaviors, environmental clues, and motives. So a strategy to add complexity and more detail to the Holmes' Meta Strategy for Observations to Conclusions (HMSO).


Applying Holmes' Strategy!
You can discover all those W-H questions by looking for corresponding clues, causes, conditions, and motives.

Environmental Clues answers ----> Where and When
Behavioral (or Antecedent) Causes ----------> What answers
Capabilities Conditions -----------> How answers
Beliefs & Values/Motives -----------> Why answers (Typically not investigated because of the psychological nature...and obscured concept).

Inference calls you to "imagine which behavior, environmental, capability, or belief CAUSES created the clues in those areas that you observe". In other words, if you see someone wearing a dress with a slight notch in their shoe, you'd create inferences and ask "what beliefs and capabilities does a person hold or have" to generate that environmental clue etc.

"Life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link of it." -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes)

Examples

Example could be someone where's a nice dress antecedent cause, they're eager to impress. Behavioral Cause.

So just cycling through the Environmental, Behavioral, Beliefs/Motives, will inspire you to process in the W-H questions leading to logical level mostly-accurate inferences and conclusions about person!

Getting caught up in the "why" the beliefs and motives of a person can be useful at times, but usually is irrelevant. On certain levels, cognitive processes can be inferred from clues.

Exercises
Making the Magic of HMSO Holme's deduction-observation process a reality. Observe someone and try to deduce their profession.

Great trigger questions:
Right handed or left-handed?
Eye-correction?
Tan or not (do they work outside)?
Married or not? (Left-hand ring finger has ring?)
Where has the person been recently?
What's their nationality?

Professional tendencies: For example would a doctor walk differently than a technician or an actor or a farmer?
How might the different professional activities a person engages in effect their clothing?

Holmes reminds us "Singularity is almost an Invariable clue". So if someone has only one shirt cuff that's wrinkled, that's likely a clue that maybe they work at a desk and rest their elbow on the desk or frequently curl up only one shirt cuff. What profession would do that? Maybe a restaurant host who occasionally had to deal with priming an oily boiler or something. The key is look for individual asymetrical clues, those usual indicate something unique!

Plug in those answers and observational environmental clues to cultural assumptions, imaginations, personal memory, and context.

For the longest time I used to bombard my conscious mind with hundreds and thousands of these observational, environmental details. However, I never took the next two steps and drew inferences and deductions. So the environmental details was overwhelming. Drawing the conclusions from the deductions and inferences (which are from the observations) gives you the nice 1-4 "highly-probably" observational estimations instead of hundreds of seemingly (even though they're all connected pointing to 1-4 conclusions) disconnected observational details. In short, if you choose to observe many environmental, behavioral, or capable clues, be prepared to go all the way and make inferences from those observations, and then conclusions from those inferences. Otherwise you'll feel overwhelmed with a jumble of observations. So "to observe and fully reach conclusions from those inferences from observations" or "to not observe". Not observing is fine, and observing and following-through to inference and conclusion is fine and dandy, but simply observing details?? That's a recipe for quick overwhelm.

So I encourage you to practice these skills. And enjoy the discovery, excitement, and ease of using your visual (and auditory) acuity to draw seemingly astonishingly accurate conclusions from the "erroneously labeled" visual trifles:D Nothing is trivial!!!!!!

"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -- “It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. To a great mind, nothing is little”(Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictitious deductive genius creation whose entire method is “founded upon the observation of trifles”).

For calibration and detecting deceit

For detecting deceit and calibration use the 1/2-second rule! Any micro-expression response that occurs within 1/2 second of a question usually has been unmeditated and thus is likely truthful. Anything longer than a 1/2 second the person can/will change! :D Gotta have quick observation skills. Thus, the truthful micro-expression response (and thus the most accurate observation) occurs immediately after the question! And your partner may already know with what word(s) you'll end a question so you must start observing (the 1/2 second) immediately once they understand the question (not necessarily after you've completed saying the question)! A lot of timing!

Asking unique and/or complex questions means the partner will have to direct their attention to the question which means there will be more of a window for an answer that was not meditated upon! So complex or unique questions extends that 1/2 second response sometimes for a more honest answer.

Another great question is a meta-question: questions about what they just said: "Should I believe you?" Often times someone will react to their own answers in different way because of the amount of self-consciousness involved.

Liberating Self from Religion 2.0

As a followup to this post, I don't think ANY post on these theme of liberating yourself from religion could be complete without Mentioned Richard Dawkins. Read Richard Dawkins. I just finished his book The God Delusion and hearing such a massively well-scholared intelligent dissection of religion and the commitment to understanding truth restored my faith in humanity and mankind.

Some notes on Dawkins's work.

1. Richawrd Dawkins. (anti-religion YAY!) To cap it all, Adam, the supposed perpetrator of
   the original sin, never existed in the first place: an awkward fact -
   excusably unknown to Paul but presumably known to an omnis-
   cient God (and Jesus, if you believe he was God?) - which
   fundamentally undermines the premise of the whole tortuously
   nasty theory. Oh, but of course, the story of Adam and Eve was
   only ever symbolic, wasn't it? Symbolic? So, in order to impress
   himself, Jesus had himself tortured and executed, in vicarious
   punishment for a symbolic sin committed by a non-existent
   individual? As I said, barking mad, as well as viciously unpleasant.
2. George Carlin (in Richard Dawkins Book God Delusion). "Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible
   man - living in the sky - who watches everything you do, every
   minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten
   things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten
   things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning
   and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer
   and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the
   end of time . . . But He loves you!" (lmao. great ridicule).
3. GREAT Atheist Commandments (BEST!!)
1. • Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to
   you.
   • In all things, strive to cause no harm.
   • Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and
   the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and
   respect.
   • Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but
   always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and
   honestly regretted.
   • Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.
   • Always seek to be learning something new.
   • Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and
   be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not
   conform to them.
   264 THR GOD DELUSION
   • Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always
   respect the right of others to disagree with you.
   • Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason
   and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by
   others.
   • Question everything.
   
4. Dawkins' Atheist commandments GREAT!
   
1. • Enjoy your own sex life (so long as it damages nobody else)
   and leave others to enjoy theirs in private whatever their
   • inclinations, which are none of your business.
   • Do not discriminate or oppress on the basis of sex, race or (as
   far as possible) species.
   • Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think
   for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree
   with you.
   • Value the future on a timescale longer than your own.
5. Alfred Hitchcock (from Richard Dawkins) "It is said that Alfred Hitchcock, the great cinematic
   specialist in the art of frightening people, was once driving through
   Switzerland when he suddenly pointed out of the car window and
   said, 'That is the most frightening sight I have ever seen.' It was a
   priest in conversation with a little boy, his hand on the boy's
   shoulder. Hitchcock leaned out of the car window and shouted,
   'Run, little boy! Run for your life!' "
6. Richard Dawkins -- "Religion has at one time or another been thought to fill four
   main roles in human life: explanation, exhortation, consolation and
   inspiration." (Science now completely Explains life. Religion provides no moral bearing on how to live; terrible group rapes and outdated commandments in religion. This is great because it shows that religion TRULY is obsolete!! A need for defining our own morality, however, IS VERY necessary and VERY present and that's why personal principles are essential!)....
7. Richard Dawkins -- Consolation, according to the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, is the
   alleviation of sorrow or mental distress. I shall divide consolation
   into two types.
   1. Direct physical consolation. A man stuck for the night on a
   bare mountain may find comfort in a large, warm St Bernard
   dog, not forgetting, of course, the brandy barrel around its
   neck. A weeping child may be consoled by the embrace of
   strong arms wrapped around her and reassuring words
   whispered in her ear.
   2. Consolation by discovery of a previously unappreciated fact,
   or a previously undiscovered way of looking at existing
   facts. A woman whose husband has been killed in war may be
   consoled by the discovery that she is pregnant by him, or that
   he died a hero.
8. (This is VERY interesting because to me, science, math, and the awe and mystery of mathematical precision and scientific technology found installed in Nature, in cellular technology, in science is the most inspiring. Again, this is MASSIVELY validating because for me the only thing religion has brought was the ANTI-THESIS OF CONSOLATION. Religion brought me being prosyletized in costa rica, religion brought me fear of fiery pits, screaming irate peope ranting things about trinities...religion brought discord and has never brought consolation! Why is that so many homeless people are connected with churhces? Because churches attract and manufuacture lost people! Science, in contrast, brought me deep truthful consolation. Science is something I can honestly absorb. I can pour over the "tenets" of the cellular respiration or the "tomes" of euclidian geometry and photosynthesis. Science and math are my source of explanation and consolation, and inspiration. And for exhoration, I combine and use a combination of science, logic, and my own principles! Seeing how much WELL-written (dawkins') material there is on anti-religion and how little well-written material on religion these days, restores my faith in humanity and mankind! :D
   
9. Carl Sagan (Science as truth!) -- "Not explaining science
   seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the
   world. This book is a personal statement, reflecting my lifelong love
   affair with science."

4 Methods of Responding to Questions.

“There are these four ways of answering questions. Which four? There are questions that should be answered categorically [straightforwardly yes, no, this, that]. There are questions that should be answered with an analytical (qualified) answer [defining or redefining the terms]. There are questions that should be answered with a counter-question. There are questions that should be put aside.
These are the four ways of answering questions. ”
-- Buddhist Quote

Redefine-Straightup-Counter-Discard = 4 Response!

Straigthforward-answer, redefinition of terms, counter-question, neglect/discard the question = Straightup beverage, "what ingredients are in that drink?", "is that the best drink on the menu? Have you tried..xyz?" "i'm not thirsty". I LOVE This because it gives you permission to understand that questions are really truly what we make of them. and we don't have to make anythong of them (discard), and can answer them if want (direct), or change them (redefine), or simply bounce them back (counter-question). I always thought I had to choose between categorically (directly) answering a question or not. Now I realize that was only 1/4 of my total options!

Is Everything for Romance? Even with Successful Careers

just woke up, just water, wore black (Great), no food, no coffee before, energizing awesome convo. good. I saw a darren brown and david tennant clip (for darren's tv show) and I relized that they went out into public to have a woman draw a picture and david was supposed to have predicted what she'd draw, but the interesting thing was how it almost seemed like david and darren were competing for the woman's attention to impress her! LOL these two HUGE awesome dudes and names (darren brown and david tennant) with huge massively successful careers, were almost primarily focused on this woman's attention. I mean i have a ton of respet for david, but my reverence for darren (he's just so gnalry) is off the charts, so seeing both these two extraordinary guys doing very unextraordiariny stuff (trying to impress a woman and have
vulnerability in that -- or maybe that is extraoridinary too!! ;D) was an eye-opener.

I mean Tennant is THE Dr. Who! How much more cool and successful and impressive is that from a sci-fi POV. And Darren....well that guy's just unfathomably cool and he represents the apex of all the skills in which I have been and currently training. So DB just operates on this unimaginably awesoem level of success. But so here were these two amazingly successful people whom I have massive respect for, doing something very common and normal -- kind of "flirting with a woman"!! :D These guys were just doing what any normal guy would do -- flirting with this woman! I mean I guess I figured at some level of success I erroneously thought you wouldn't have to worry about those htings (flirting, courtship, etc) but while I'm sure those guys don't worry about them, they still DO them. Romance is alive for every person regardless of their level of success. In many ways I htink romance is kind of the common denominator that makes someone's career or their image etc, operate from a baseline: yeah we are all human, we all have human emotions. Cool! But it was something to which I could relate. I could only look up to their careers -- wow, db's nlp skills insane! etc -- but when I saw them flirting with this woman, I was like "Hey!! Hey! Hey, I'm on the same level with them in that regard at least!!" :D

Realized that whatever level of success, romance and intimacy is still something that's very alive for people! And it just seemed these hugely massively successful careers, it's like that success got whittled down to just courtship, trying to impress, having a lot going for the sake of romance. VERY interesting. I guess the main insight was if I look at david and darren's careers, they seem pretty amazingly impenetrable successful, like intangible success like invulnerable success! But then when I saw them almost in this teasing, trying to impress mode, it made their careers a lot more connected and real and something that I could relate to! very cool!

Heroic Journey of My Coaching Process

First off I noticed that the ICA Coaching Process Diagram resembles Joseph Campbell's Hero of a Thousand Faces 12-phases of the heroic Journey. Joseph campbell is an author of mythology and kind of mythological dissection. He went back and scrutinized myriad myths and plugging in some Jungian archetypes extracting some archetypes, he extracted these 12 stages that occur in almost every myth be it 1970s star wars or a 500 bc folktale. And the phases involve a departure, encountering obstacles, tests, helpers, return, seizing the elixir and others. so the coaching process resembles the heroic journey that a client will go through and experience!

The most fascinating connection I saw was that in 1998 I made an abstract self-portrait that strongly resembles the ICA coaching process! Except that mine utilizes more color, which I like. I have a confusion, dark cloud on the left side which is where the client starts -- from confusion, muddled doubt, fear, and its a rough, grey-black textured part of the abstract canvas. Then there's an up and down energy line which reflect the heroic journey and the end result is this warm smooth, red and yellow chunk that represents the achievement, the kindness and love. ST. Ambrose said, "Faith is in the beginning and love is in the end." On my coaching journey process, Love is truly the the end result of the coaching and the energy-heroic line has greens, reds, blues, and many colors of change. What's interesting is that instead of pillars I have 3 slivers of red and yellow surrounding the main sphere (the client's core and their compassionate reservoir which always stays the same and contains their infinite potential). Those slivers represent passion, love, and joy that are ALWAYS with hte client throughout the entire journey!! Unlike the pillar where they'd go through the truth-telling and listening phases and then a questioning phase, my model of coaching (that I painted 11 years ago) has these empowering qualities ALWAYS with the client throughout the entire journey that they can and should and do draw upon!!

So the Beginning of my client process starts at "muddled confusion and doubt and fear"

The Goal: is emergence into passion, warmth, and kindness.

Towards then experience of achieving the ultimate conclusion, the client typically has "the nascence of new ideas and new conclusions and journeys" but it doest get slightly steeper, but only because the achievement of this coaching process will be all the more fulfilling!

Additionally, my coaching model resembles the Dalai Lama's ever-increasing path of happiness, indicating that "yes" there are "peaks and valleys" in the achievement of that goal-process, however, the subsequent valleys (challenges) decrease in difficulty while the peaks (high points) exponentially increase in pleasure and success and total happiness!

And in my "canvas of the client process". there is a define starting "texture" (rough, complex, fearful) and ending texture (smooth, like rolling pastures of warmth and sucess and freedom).

So it's fascinating. I've been coneptualizing coaching and my coaching proces for 11 years. Since 1998 when I first designed my abstract portrait. That portrai will become my coaching model and my logo. Additionally 11 years ago was when I embarked on doing many free association techniques and stepping into and eliminating fear and ultimately expanding and empowering the truly infinite nature of my life. Everything I've done since then, since I embarked on my coaching journey 11 years ago, be it living in teh jungle or writing over half a dozen books, or over 300 articles, journeying ot costa rica, peru, europe, my computer science work, or running marathons, or experience and exploring soemtiems frightening or different parts of the world and the life experience...ALL of that has been part of my journey as a human becoming a coach. So that warmth or reds and yellows of passion and clarity is coaching for me, and I'm there, I've arrived!!!!!

So this is what I've devoted my life to (the past 11 years) into making myself the best coach I could possible be. Now for the next 12 years of my life, I will be getting paid to help clients maximize their own potential personally and professionally, just as I have coached myself to do (and have had literally tens of thousands of othe coaches, coach me in the process). So this is exciting and galvanizing!

And I'm massively stoked to have you depart from fear, doubt, and bumpy uncertainty, go through your own heroic journey, and then ultimately experience your pastures of smooth success and richly colored happienss!!!!! :D

So not only have I been training as a coach for the past 12 years (really I started the portrait in 1997), but I have developing my own model for the client's heroic journey during coaching!!

And EVERYTHING -- from Campbell's mythological heroicisms, to nlp training, to personal experiences -- has been moving towards more clarity for my coaching process!!

I've bene coaching for free for 12 years and it's been TERRIFIC!! Now i'm infusing affordable payment packages into my coaching so in addition to doing what I love, I will get paid to coach now too! Great! That will is terrific as well!