Unadvertised Bonus #1

BECOMING
LUCKY
by
Stuart Lichtman
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 2
Copyright 2002 by Stuart Lichtman
All rights reserved. Reproduction and distribution are forbidden.
No part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
by any other means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without written permission from the authors.
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard
to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the author and the
publisher are not engaged in rendering medical, psychological, legal, accounting, or any
other professional advice. If medical advice or other professional assistance is required,
the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Also, the terms Cybernetic Transposition Basic Achievement Three-Step and
Cybernetic Transposition Super Achievement Three-Step are pending registration and
are fully protected names owned by Stuart Lichtman. They may not be used without his
written permission.
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 3
What Is Luck About?
When I talk about being lucky, Im talking about the ease and immediacy of return.
Relatively instant gratification.
To me, being lucky means:
I find a $20 bill on the ground
I get a free upgrade at a hotel
I immediately find a parking space where none are supposed to be available.
I have an empty taxi pull right up in front of me during a New York rainstorm while
everyone else is frantically trying to get one.
And otherwise being easily successful in ordinary situations.
In business, being lucky means to me:
Having someone who becomes my next client change seats to sit next to me on an
airplane so I can sell them on the idea.
Having a friend mention Margaret Thatchers speech in the House of Commons that
triggers me to write her a brief letter quickly resulting in a major contract.
Having an acquaintance mention someone who quickly becomes my next client.
Calling someone important who can never be reached by phone and getting right
through.
All of these are things that actually happened to me. Thats the way my life works now.
That isnt the way it was for most of my life, however. I had to teach myself how to be
lucky.
Thats what Im going to teach you in this ebook.
For example, do you have trouble finding parking places at work? How would you like to
simply picture a perfect parking place, pop that imaginary experience into your Inner
Anchor Point, and drive right up to that empty parking place?
Thats what I mean by being lucky in the way Ill going to show you.
If thats got you excited, read on.
You already have the basic tools. Ill show you how to apply them.
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 4
Using the Cybernetic Transposition Techniques to Become Lucky
While the Cybernetic Transposition Super Achievement Three-Step techniques
empower you to achieve your goals in ways that seem lucky, they require a fair amount
of conscious attention to setting things up.
Some of you may want to become more automatically lucky.
Thats what this Unadvertised Bonus ebook is about.
We call people lucky when they seem to automatically get what they want.
I call them people who have unconsciously generated their successfulness.
Being lucky in this way is, however, still limited to those things that are primarily the
result of your own actions, that dont primarily rely on the efforts of others. For example,
these techniques wont typically win you the Lottery.
But they will make your life a lot easier, a lot more abundant and a lot more fun.
Becoming Lucky
When you have a clear, unconflicted unconscious target, a high priority on hitting that
target and when there are no unconscious barriers to achieving that target, you seemingly
automatically hit your target.
Thats what you achieve when you do the Cybernetic Transposition Three-Step process.
With that process, you harness the massive power of your unconscious mind which
comprises most of the one hundred billion or so very powerful tiny computers that make
up the brain. Scientists and engineers have now calculated that a single human brain has
about 1,000 times the power of ALL of the computers in the world IF they were
effectively networked. Thats a lot of power!
Again, the best way that I know of harnessing that massive power is through the use of
the Cybernetic Transposition Three-Step system.
Thats also the best way I know of becoming lucky.
The Steps Involved in Becoming Lucky
Surprisingly, becoming lucky is a pretty logical process. There are two primary steps:
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 5
Making the Cybernetic Transposition process streamlined, more natural, more
automatic.
Setting a Cybernetic Transposition objective of becoming lucky in a specific part of
your life.
Simplifying and Personalizing the Cybernetic Transposition Three-Step
Early on, I pointed out that we are naturally successful but cover over the skills that make
us so with what people tell us, our mental focus in school, and the resultant negative
experiences.
The Cybernetic Transposition Three-Step processes are designed effectively frame those
natural success skills so that they become consciously accessible to you.
Once you have practiced with those techniques a reasonable amount, your unconscious
knows what you are getting at, and this potentially enables you to modify the processes
so they work more easily and naturally for you.
So if youve successfully used the Cybernetic Transposition Super Three-Step to achieve
at least 3 meaningful objectives, you can begin a program of simplifying things.
The steps are as follows:
1. Create a series of Metastories that focus on your experiences of utilizing the
Super Three-Step techniques.
However, this time when you intuitively rate a Metastory as less than 10, work
explicitly with your creative part and True-Self (if you have located it) to generate
a new alternative that's really on-track for you.
As you frame your experiences in this way, you'll probably note that some things
are just right for you and others are really tiresome, boring, or confusing.
The experiences that are already 10's reflect an unconscious interpretation of what
you've read in ways that have already brought you to your natural processes.
The blocker feelings indicate that you are straying from your natural path.
2. Perform a Super Achievement Clearing Process with each of the blocker feelings
you have identified. In some cases, you will very rapidly resolve the blocker into
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 6
a "perfect" modification of the processes. In others, you'll have to complete a
Base Reframing or a full Sub-Personality Negotiation before you move on.
Be sure that you have resolved all of the intense blockers before you go to step 3.
3. Treat each of your "perfect 10" Metastories as a key element of the Super
Achievement Target Process. Then perform steps 2 through 9 of the Target
Process.
4. Practice according to the practice schedule presented in Chapter Eleven of How to
Get Lots of Money for Anything - Fast, applying your original versions of the
techniques in the process.
If, at any point while you are practicing, your unconscious lets you know that its
now appropriate to use your modified versions of the techniques, do so.
You'll know you've reached your objective of simplifying things when you get all
10's in your practice ratings of key elements.
Youll have confirmation that your new version works when you set and achieve a
suitable objective using your simplified version of the Three-Step.
That's all there is to it.
How This Makes You Luckier
The more that your natural success skills are stimulated and framed through using and
refining the Cybernetic Transposition Three-Step process, the more automatically they
will work. The more working automatically they work, the luckier you become.
By simplifying and personalizing the Cybernetic Transposition techniques, you are
guiding your unconscious in returning to your natural versions of these techniques.
As this occurs, the techniques will work increasingly automatically without less and less
conscious attention. The result will be that you become luckier!
Lets Get On with the Second Aspect of Becoming Lucky!
This involves setting Super Achievement objective for becoming lucky in a specific area
of your life:
1. Identify some area of your life where youd like to become lucky.
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 7
2. Using the Objectives Process form, create a conscious objective of becoming
lucky in that area. Be sure that you include quantitative measures of what results
you want to occur when you are lucky.
Of course, as one or preferably more key elements, you have to define what
you mean by being lucky.
To do so, you should scan your memory of times when you may have experienced
being lucky.
When you find even one example, set a Basic Achievement Objective of
remembering more and follow through with the Basic Three-Step process. You
should become aware of lots of examples pretty quickly.
Or, if you cant remember an example from your own life, recall one from a
movie or book that rings true for you.
For example, you can search the web for movies that show someone being lucky.
Once you see or remember seeing a movie that shows someone being lucky in a
way that rings true for you, find more examples by saying to your unconscious,
find more of them, using the Basic Achievement Three-Step or, if appropriate,
the Super Achievement.
3. Using the Cybernetic Transposition Super Achievement Three-Step process,
translate your conscious objective into an unconscious Target. Do all parts of the
Three-Step including consistently practicing in the indicated fashion.
4. On a daily basis, review the key elements that you identified during the
Cybernetic Transposition Target Process. Rate how fully you have achieved
each one using a 1 to 10 scale where 1 equals nothing achieved at all and 10
equals fully achieved.
If you identify any key elements where you are showing no progress, search your
awareness for body signals that indicate the presence of blockers. When you find
those blockers, resolve them using the Cybernetic Transposition Base
Reframing Process.
5. If you have thoughts that you arent lucky or the intuitive feeling that some part of
you doesnt want you to be lucky, frame the body feeling that comprise that
intuitive feeling and conduct a Super Achievement Clearing Process, a
Subpersonality Negotiation or a Base Reframing with that part of your
unconscious.
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 8
Typical blockers include: Im just not lucky. This is silly. Im not lucky. Ive
never won anything in my life. I only get things by working hard. Luck isnt
for me.
If you do this complete process, pretty soon youll find that you are getting all 10s on
your key elements. You will BE lucky in the way you specified.
Build On What You Have Already Achieved
Once you have achieved your first level of being lucky, continue building your luck by
creating Metastories of where you have been lucky and the opposite of where you have
not been. Convert these Metastories into an unconscious Target using the Cybernetic
Transposition Super Three-Step process and follow through with the rest of the process.
You can repeat this several times, building greater and greater luck as your unconscious
becomes increasingly aware of what you want from it and you increasingly resolve the
unconscious habit patterns that limit how lucky you are.
Becoming Lucky in Other Areas of Your Life
The process I just described can be extended to other areas of your life. The one change
that you should make from the above instructions is as follows (the numbering refers to
the instructions on the Target Process form):
3a. When you are framing the key elements on your Cybernetic Transposition
Target Process form, be sure to include several that involve your experiences of
being lucky in the area of your life that you initially worked on.
As you do during the Target Process, in your imagination change the memory of
being lucky in the initial way to a true 10 imaginary experience of being lucky in
the new way that you desire.
Youll find that building on your successes in this way, works remarkably well.
Whats Next?
To the extent that you want, you can pretty much make your entire life lucky.
However, when you do, being lucky will seem normal.
Of course thats not too bad, is it?
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 9
The Amazing Brain That Makes This All Work
The rest of this ebook is aimed at those of you whod like to learn more about how your
brain produces these remarkable results.
I think youll find what I have to say pretty amazing.
Someone once guessed that we use less than 10 percent of our brain power in normal
activities. That was a pretty poor guess, either far too high or far too low. If we're talking
about conscious use of our brains, the correct figure would be perhaps .00001 percent or
less but if we're talking about combined conscious and unconscious use, we'd end up
close to 100 percent!
A human brain is a spongy 2 1/4 to 3 1/4 pound mass comprised of about 100 billion tiny
computers, each called a neuron or brain cell. Each neuronal computer typically receives
input from 1 to 10 thousand other neuronal computers, communicates its conclusions to
as many others, creates new physical links to them in 45 seconds or so, and radically
changes its operation based on inputs from both other neurons and so-called chemical
messengers in the bloodstream that originate in other organs of the body.
Various of these neuronal computers can effectively lead millions and billions of
others, thus producing the brain wave patterns we can observe with EEG equipment.
They are linked by a mass of interconnections that are so dense, they are called the
feltworks.
The retina of the eye is an extension of the brain that is so sensitive it can respond to the
smallest units of light that physicists have defined, the almost mystical photon that acts
both as a wave of energy and a particle of matter!
The ears are almost as sensitive, responding to so-called Brownian motion, the sound of
molecules colliding with each other as they randomly move in the air!
What's more, the brain converts all sensory inputs (except those from the nose) into a
single language so that, for example, the skin can be trained to perform the functions of
eyes and ears, ears can do much of what eyes can, and so forth.
The process of seeing something is almost unimaginably sophisticated. It starts with the
extension of the brain called the retina, the four-layer structure covering the back of the
eyeball. The retina incorporates approximately 20 million chemical computers, many of
which are capable of detecting a single photon of light (the smallest unit of light in
modern physics). These are linked in more than 100 different types of networks that each
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 10
recognize a specialized visual characteristics such as horizontal or vertical movement,
edges of shapes, particular kinds of curves, and such.
Based on dynamically changing instructions fed-forward to the retina from the brain, the
20 million bits of data per second are reduced to about 5 percent of that and these are fed
back toward the brain through the optic nerves.
About half way on the trip, each optic nerve splits so that half of the signals from the
right eye join with half from the left eye on each side. The signals then go through a 6-
stage signal processing computer whose output enters the first of fourteen major stages
of processing within the brain. The first stage of this pathway compares the incoming
signals with stored gross patterns such as lines, curves, and angles and then instructs
the signal processing computer to change one or more of the incoming signals from the
eye so that the result better matches an existing pattern. In other words, this is where the
self-fulfilling prophecy process starts.
Other branches go to non-visual processing centers deeper in the brain, ones that allow
people who can't see because of damage to the visual part of the brain to consistently and
accurately guess what is in front of their eyes, even though they can't see.
Within the visual brain, the incoming signals branch into three pathways, one for
outlines, one for shape, and one for colors, each of which goes through an additional 14
major stages of comparison with increasingly sophisticated stored models that eventually
includes such things as chimpanzee, Mercedes-Benz 380, Quiche Lorraine, and Marlon
Brando. Finally, the three pathways are merged and combined with inputs from the
verbal brain that names the image and from the tactile brain that confirms the data.
And all of this happens automatically - and usually accurately!
Computational Neuroscientists, who are skilled in both traditional neuroanatomy and the
design of computers, are attempting to duplicate the brain's functions in semiconductor
form. So far, their most important achievement is the creation of two types of individual
silicon neurons, one that emulates part of the neocortex or thinking brain and another
that does what a retinal neuron can. This is a truly major achievement involving the latest
very large scale integrated circuit (VLSI) technology but is also a trivial result compared
with the amazing sophistication of our brains. For example, as of last year, these
scientists said that a typical human brain performs a million billion computing operations
per second, about 10 million times as many as the fastest supercomputer and yet uses
only one one-hundred-millionth as much power per operation! What's more, they pointed
out, even a honeybee's brain is a thousand times as powerful as that same supercomputer
and that a single human brain is 1,000 times as powerful as all of the electronic
computers on earth put together!
That's one way of understanding the awesome sophistication, beauty, and power of our
human brains.
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 11
Brain Power and the World
The world is a very, very, very complex place filled with an amazing array of alternatives
in even seemingly simple situations. Billions, trillions, quadrillions and even more. All
you have to do is to search through them to find one or more that meet your
specifications, a process that's called invention. (See Unadvertised Bonus #7.)
However, our conscious minds aren't set up to do this very efficiently. In fact they'd take
hundreds of years to do a single search. Instead, we have to activate parts of our brains
that are usually out of our conscious control. I'm talking about the roughly 100 billion
tiny computers that make up our brains.
We all have the experience of this incredible computing power at work. For example,
think about what happens when you look at a word on paper. Linguistic researchers point
out that you unconsciously scan through 250 to 500 thousand words in a half second to
find one that matches what's on paper. The result is an intuitive awareness that you do or
do not know the word.
A word on paper is a pretty clear search target. Another clear one results from struggling
to find a solution to an important problem. After trying and failing, you finally fall asleep
exhausted with the problem on your mind. Then you may wake up some hours later with
the answer clearly in mind. In the meantime, you brain has scanned through perhaps 15 to
30 billion alternatives to find one that fits your requirements, depending on how much
sleep you got!
The brain is so massively complex that the only outer world system that comes
anywhere near to matching it in the number of computers and connections is the world-
wide telephone system. Yet we individually see none of that complexity. We simply dial
a country code, area code, and local number and connect with Minsk or Nice or Tokyo or
Bora Bora.
From a user point of view, the telephone seems simple. From a technical point of view it
is a nightmare of complexity. So it is with the human brain. Yet, when your conscious
mind is working effectively and in harmony with your unconscious brain parts, your
simply think of doing something - such as getting up - and it happens. All of that amazing
complexity works harmoniously to give you what you consciously want.
And that's the way it can and should be.
I hope you're beginning to get the point that we each have amazing potential that we
seldom use!
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 12
For example, there are about 5 billion people on earth. How many does it take to create a
revolution? Well, it took less than 100 individuals acting in concert to bring about the
American and Russian Revolutions. Apple Computer created the personal computer
business with fewer than 100 and the whole of Silicon Valley sprang from the vision of
perhaps 20 people surrounding Dr. Shockley, the inventor of the transistor.
But that's still a lot. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone and electric light
working with a single assistant and popularized the devices with not many more.
And if you're religiously inclined, you might say that two people - Jesus Christ and John
the Baptist wrought perhaps the most profound changes in modern times!
Margaret Mead, the dean of anthropology - the study of people in groups - says, Never
doubt that a small group of dedicated people can change the world. In fact, they're the
only ones who can.
And never doubt that a small population of your brain cells working in concert can
change your world!
Where's The Operating Manual For This Marvelous Machine?
What a marvelous power house, our brains. And what a system. But where's the
instruction manual? Isn't there one? Of course there it. But it is buried in the brain itself.
And the more we pretend we know what's going on in a conventional sense, the more we
block ourselves from getting the point!
Early in our lives, we learn from our inner instruction manuals. These unconsciously
guide us in doing things and our conscious mind learns by observing the result. (Inner
knowing acted out in the world and then internalized by the conscious mind thus creates
wisdom.)
At that point in our development we don't have a normal consciousness as we do now
because we don't yet have the words and phrases that comprise it.
Instead, we experience the world the way our ancestors did until perhaps 4,000 years ago
- before alphabetic writing - in something like the way we experience a totally engrossing
movie: feeling and otherwise directly experiencing rather than thinking with words.
As children, our unconscious instruction manual guides us in learning to balance
ourselves upright (a magnificent achievement many times more challenging than any
adult task), in turn blurry blips into images so we can see, and in learning language!
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 13
That's when things start to go wrong. We think language is magnificent. In fact, it is
trivial.
Let me give you one simple example. Remember the smell of fresh coffee. That's a pretty
rich experience, isn't it. Now consider writing or speaking a description of that smell. But
only the smell that's so clear in your memory. Thus, don't refer to coffee or coffee
substitutes, the situations in which you find coffee, where it comes from, how you make
it, its physical appearance and the utensils used to make or serve it. Just describe the
smell!
Hmmmmm!
A linguist friend has estimated that it would take only about 10,000 to 20,000 words to
write a description of the smell of fresh coffee such that at least 50 percent of those who
read it would correctly identify it. And that assumes a poetic bent!
Why?
Because words are very imprecise! They are imprecise because of the way we learn their
meanings - by observation!
A child observes adults using words and unconsciously synthesizes these descriptions
into an intuitive definition.
But each child has a different set of experiences and a different synthetic process. The
result? Words that mean substantially different things to each of us at the same time we
pretend they mean the same thing.
For example, realize that we can individually recognize about 1,000 different shades of
green. What's your shade? There's only one chance in a thousand that it's mine! And in a
group of three, there's only 1 chance in a million that were all talking about the same
green.
And that's an easy word. How about love, happy, active...
The point is that our conscious minds are entirely constructed of words. We cannot hold a
concept consciously that doesn't have a name. But our conscious minds desperately need
to pretend they know what's going on so we name everything we can, usually incorrectly.
That's how conflicts often arise.
Our poor conscious minds! Fumbling around with words that are imprecise, pretending
they're in control when they're just followers, and not knowing what to do with the whole
situation!
What a mess!
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 14
But there are a few people around who've got the hang of making it all work. Surprisingly
enough, we also have a name for them. If we see exactly what they're doing, we call them
lucky. Otherwise, we assume they're working the way we do and simply call them
successful.
That's right! Luck is simply unconsciously generated success. Just like the lucky
improvements in tennis scores that Tim Gallwey produced with The Inner Game of
Tennis by getting his students' conscious minds out of the way.
We have many unconsciously generated and seemingly automatic abilities that just take
for granted. Examples include: breathing, seeing, hearing, standing and walking, reading,
talking, writing, driving a car, catching a ball, and most other things we take for granted.
And when we restimulate them, we have other massively powerful unconscious success
abilities too!
The Onion
A simple model of the brain developed by Paul MacLean of the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) can help here. He visualized a three-layer onion with the evolutionarily oldest part of
the brain at the center and the most recent on the outside. I've changed that to five with the
outside three layers of equivalent evolutionary age.
Each of these layers speaks a different language. At the core we find a small bulb
that is at the top of the spinal column of every vertebrate creature, even the most simple.
It is called the brain stem and its language is physical stimulus-response. The brain stem
takes charge when you touch something hot and jerk your hand away without conscious
thought. Or you jerk the steering wheel of your car to avoid a car coming from the side
before you consciously realize that there is no danger. A key part of the brainstem is
called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). This controls the volume of the
neocortex and, thus, your conscious focus.
So, if you focus on finding quarters on the pavement in ways that sensitize the reticular
activating system, pretty soon you'll start finding lots and lots of quarters. (One
psychology grad student tried it and found 75 quarters in a month.) And if you start
looking at and considering buying a Volvo, you'll soon be amazed at the incredible
number of them you see on the street! Thus comes the old Sufi (Iranian) saying, If a
pickpocket saw a Saint coming down the road, all he'd see would be pockets. On the
other hand, destroy your RAS and you'll be a comatose vegetable the rest of your life.
The second layer of the brain-onion is called the mid-brain or limbic system. It speaks in
emotions and can channel a lot of energy. For example, when an enraged parent unthinkingly
rushes into a burning building to save his child - the midbrain is at work. This is also the case
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 15
when a mother lifts her car off of her child to save its life. It's clearly impossible for a normal
120 pound woman to lift 1,000 pounds and just as clearly a documented fact with thousands
of examples. The midbrain also comes into play when you think you'll be fired and never get
another job if you fail to meet a critical deadline and you do three weeks work in two hours.
If you've raised small children, you're undoubtedly familiar with the so-called terrible
two's when the midbrain starts to come into its own. Rage, anger, and other emotions
are typical. Yet these emotions are the driving force of accomplishment, of memory
formation.
If you physically damage these mid-brain systems - the amygdala and hippocampus,
you'll never again form a new memory. There is an intimate connection between the
midbrain's emotional centers and the parts of the neocortex (new-brain), the frontal lobes,
that keep us focused on what we're doing.
When the frontal lobes are short-circuited as in a baby, its focus is intense but either
totally on or totally off. Thus a baby will grasp an object with a grip so tight that you
can't take it away - until you put some other interesting thing in front of its eyes and
object number one falls to the floor while number two inherits the death grip.
The third element of the brain-onion, a part of the outer layer, is about 1/8 inch thick, one
square foot in area, and made up of six layers. It is called the right lobe of the neo-cortex and
is also referred to as the right-brain. Its language is visual, auditory, and tactile patterns. It
gives you the feelings that you associate with music, art, or someone touching you. This is the
part of your brain that's adept at synthesizing myriad inputs into an unnamed sensory flash.
But it's not the one that puts those pieces together into a named whole, a consciously
recognizable something. That's the fifth element, the left lobe of the neo-cortex, the so-called
left-brain.
The language of the left-brain is words and words count only when they're associated
with right brain, mid-brain, and brainstem experiences.
For example, right now again recall the smell of freshly brewed coffee. That's easy, isn't
it - suddenly you're aware of that vivid smell. But it's almost impossible to describe the
experience in words because you're dealing with two very different languages - words
and experiences and you don't have a translation dictionary! That's why I developed the
Cybernetic Transposition Target Process to perform the translation function.
The fourth element of the brain-onion really consists of three elements called the anterior
commisure, the posterior commisure, and the corpus-callosum.
These three parts are supposed to carry information between the left and right brain, the third
and fifth layers of the onion. And the commisures usually do, moving raw verbal stuff from
left brain to the right and the raw visual and tactile-movement stuff from the right to the left.
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 16
But the corpus-callosum, the pathway through which the thought-out data is supposed to
move is very often completely blocked as can be readily seen by measuring brain-wave
activity.
These five major elements - the brain stem, midbrain, right-brain, corpus-callosum and left-
brain are functionally connected in a line. However, while the brain-stem, mid-brain, and
right-brain usually work well together, the corpus-callosum is usually closed and, thus, cuts
the left-brain out of the system, letting little or no information through.
Why is this? Unfortunately, most of the problem results from our preoccupation with written
and spoken language, a relatively recent phenomenon given that man was demonstrably on
earth 2 million years ago or so. In contrast, alphabetic languages are only about 4,000 years
old and it has been only about 2,800 years since the ability to read extended beyond the elite
one-percent of the population. The fact is that the more book-educated someone is, the
more closed the corpus-callosum. And the more primitive, the more open it is. That seems
backwards, doesn't it?
So how do we open the connection? And why do we need to?
We need to open it because we need all of our brain systems to cooperate. Otherwise they
will pull us in different directions and dissipate all of our energy in inner conflict. That
conflict is so prevalent that we have many names for the phenomenon, for example, stress,
tension, fatigue, burnout, etc.
Imagine a football game where each player on a team had a different plan. The results
would be a chaotic, Keystone Cops type of situation, one that makes winning the game
seemingly impossible.
And when our various brain systems are in conflict, winning our own games is seemingly
impossible. So we must learn to be an effective leader of our various brain systems if our
team is to win the results that we want to achieve.
Another way of looking at the same important point is in terms of a model I call Four
Sides of the Room!
Imagine a four-sided room and further imagine that four people are standing in the room,
each with his or her back to a different one of the walls. What if each of them describes
the room totally honestly from where he or she is standing. Almost certainly, each
description will be different - radically different if the walls and furnishings aren't the
same on all sides.
It would be pretty easy to get into quite an uproarious fight if each person assumed that
the others were looking from the same point of view, wouldn't it? Each of our four
people would know they were telling the truth yet the descriptions would be different.
And there, my friends, is the basis of most personal and organizational conflict.
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 17
What if each wall represented the perspective of one of the four parts of your brain. We'd
have the very fast stimulus-response wall of the brainstem, the slower but explosive wall
of the midbrain, the still slower but very sensitive and subtly aware wall of the right-brain
and, finally, the verbal, jump-to-conclusions wall of the left-brain. Wow! Could they get
into a fight! As a matter of fact, not only can they get into fights, they do most of the
time. And the result is trying and failing, illness and fatigue!
Conscious versus Unconscious
Psychology Professor Julian Jaynes of Princeton University devoted the first 100 pages or
so of his book, The Origin of Conscious in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (the
title referring to the emergence of consciousness as written language became widespread)
to a rather comprehensive review of the past 100 years of research into conscious versus
unconscious human functioning. He concluded that our conscious minds are unnecessary
for doing most, if not all, of what we do.
Check that out for yourself. Remember what you did the last time you were driving your
car and someone actually or potentially pulled out on you from the side. You jerked the
wheel to avoid them, hit the brake or accelerator, and stabilized the car automatically.
Then you consciously noted what you'd done unconsciously.
This is the normal way in which we unconsciously drive our cars. We consciously think
the thoughts our unconscious mind puts there, listen to the radio, talk to our passengers or
on the phone, make notes, observe other cars and comment to ourselves about the traffic
and weather. But the driving is automatic once we have mastered the process.
That's the way we normally work, something that Tim Gallway intuitively understood
when he developed The Game of Inner Tennis and Inner Skiing. These programs
teach us to give our conscious minds an irrelevant job so we can unconsciously get on
with the job at hand.
Michael Gazzaniga, originally Roger Sperry assistant in the Nobel Prize-winning
development of the right brain-left brain concept, then the head of the Columbia
University Medical Research Center, and now holding the same job at USC studied
consciousness and so-called split brain people with very revealing results. Someone is
called split-brain when the three connections between the right and left brains have been
surgically cut, usually to eliminate very severe epilepsy.
Imagine what happens when those communications paths are cut! Contemplating the
effects of such surgery, doctors hesitated for fear of turning their patients into vegetables.
That's why they only proceeded when the epileptic fits were potentially life threatening.
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 18
But what they found was not at all what they expected. Oh yes, the surgery cured the
epilepsy as expected. Otherwise, there were no observable behavioral changes! The
absence of these major connections between the right and left brain seemed to make no
difference. At least until Sperry and Gazzaniga delved deeper.
What they really found was that the eyes were substituting for the missing brain
connections and that the real impact of the surgery became apparent when the split-brain
patients' hands were hidden from them. Then, the task of assembling a 3-dimensional
puzzle became a war between the left-brain controlled right hand and the right-brain
controlled left hand. They had entirely different strategies and destroyed each others'
work to pursue their own.
Now the plot thickens. Gazzaniga pursued further work with split brain patients. Using
clever equipment, he flashed a simple message, get up to their right brains and a blank
to their left brains while asking them to comment on what they'd seen. Here's what
transpired! Each patient invariably stood up. When asked what they'd seen, they said
nothing (left brain).
When asked why they'd stood up, there was a 1/2 to 1 second pause and then a response
like, I'm tired, I want a drink, This is stupid. I'm tired of it, I need to go to the
bathroom, etc. Never once did a subject say they'd stood up because their right brain had
been instructed to do so and no two subjects gave the same reason for standing up. But
they all stood up!
From this and other data, Gazzaniga deduced that the right brain stood them up while a
particular part of the left brain responded to the Why did you get up? question by first
confirming that they were actually standing and then constructing a reason for having
done so.
He named this part of the left brain, the Interpreter Module because it always interpreted
the situation and came up with a plausible but incorrect explanation. Which reminds me
of an old saying, When you're being run out of town, get to the head of the crowd and
pretend you're leading the parade!
The Interpreter Module is, in fact, our ordinary consciousness and research indicates that
it is an observer and commenter on our unconsciously generated decisions rather than the
part of us that makes them!
If that comes as a shock, here's another.
Brain researchers have found that we unconsciously signal our muscles to do something 1
to 5 seconds before we supposedly consciously decide to do it!
Not only that, we have an elaborate mechanism that allows us to radically change or even
cancel our sensory perceptions of having done something between the time that
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 19
something actually takes place and the later time when we think we consciously decide to
make it happen.
I call that perceptual blanking and you've probably experienced a form of it when you
absolutely could not find your car keys while rushing out to a meeting you didn't want to
attend and later found them exactly where you'd first looked.
Here's another shocker! Studies of left and right brain EEG's (brain wave patterns) clearly
show that the connections between the right and left brain are usually functionally closed,
closed as effectively as if severed by a surgeon's scalpel in most people and in most
situations. So, in a very real sense, the saying, The right hand doesn't know what the left
hand is doing, is right on track.
However, Dr. C. Maxwell Cade's studies in the U.K. involving many thousands of
subjects demonstrated an exception to this rule.
High achieving people and experts in their own fields demonstrate balanced right and
left brain functioning. Somehow they learned to generate cooperation between these
parts of their brains. What's more, brilliant people and spiritual masters function in a bi-
lateral fashion to a much more profound extent than do even normal high achievers.
The Difference between Conflict and Cooperation among the Right and
Left Brains
Stanislavsky, the Russian acting coach and director whose work later influenced Marlon
Brando and many other of our famous actors intuitively knew about the lack of
cooperation between the right and left brains and demonstrated it to his new students by
having them whirl madly round and round the stage until he cried Stop! Hold your
position!
His students then found themselves in awkward and precariously balanced positions that
Stanislavsky insisted they hold for an extended time. Muscles began to spasm, dizziness
occurred, balance became even more precarious.
Then the master told his students to imagine a situation in which their awkward and out-
of-balance situations would be normal.
So someone standing on one foot, hands outstretched above her in the air might imagine
she was putting a suitcase into the above-seat rack of a train while waiting for it to depart.
(Stanislavsky taught around the beginning of the 20
th
century.) And as soon as she did,
her whole body relaxed, enabling her to continue holding the same position for an
extended time.
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 20
Why did this happen?
Because she brought the various parts of her brain into agreement. Initially, her
Interpreter Module, her left brain consciousness, couldn't make sense of the situation,
what with all the unexpected body sensations, and wanted out.
This confused the rest of the brain and set up an inner conflict that was evidenced by
muscles fighting each other (muscle spasms), reduction of blood supply to the brain
(dizziness), and so forth.
But once the Interpreter Module was satisfied with the situation and acknowledged the
appropriateness of the imaginary experience presented to it by the right brain, it relaxed
and cooperated.
If Stanislavsky had examined the EEG brainwave patterns of his students, he would
almost certainly have noted the same thing that Dr. Eugene Gendelin of the University of
Chicago and his associates noted when studying intuitive breakthroughs. An intuitive
aha experience observable in the right-brain EEG waves is followed closely (usually
within 30 seconds) by a conscious understanding (Oh! That's it!) and a sharp increase
in left-brain wave EEG activity.
After many years of research, observation and training people to consistently achieve
seemingly impossible objectives, I've joined Prof. Jaynes in the conclusion that ordinary
consciousness is a rather useless collection of words and phrases, associated according to
what we have been told, heard on TV and elsewhere, and read and interconnected with
each other based on situational connections.
For example, contrast a decision to go on a diet with a conscious craving for food. Or a
commitment to get a good night's sleep with our insistence on finishing a TV movie or a
book.
Reality, That's What
Reality is another name for the way you have unconsciously constructed your perceptions
of the world and of your life within it. Or, as Walt Kelly's Pogo put it, "What have you
got if you don't have your daydreams? Reality, that's what!"
Reality is a construction of our ordinary consciousness, the Interpreter Module. One
person's reality may be filled with possibilities and another's perceptions of the same
situations may be filled with restrictions. For example:
There were two brothers who urgently wanted a pony for Christmas,
something they made quite clear to their parents. Over and over again, the
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 21
boys managed to find some way of associating everyday events with their
desire for a pony. Finally, Christmas morning arrived but there was no
pony under the tree. And to make things worse, the boys' father sent them
out to the garage to clean up. Adding insult to injury, the garage was full
of horse manure.
The oldest boy, Tom, in ultimate despair, bemoaned his fate: Scrooge-like
parents and unfulfilled dreams. In contrast, Ralph, the younger brother,
became very excited, jumping up and down with a broad smile on his face.
Finally, Tom lashed out, screaming, "What's wrong with you stupid! Are
you crazy?"
Ralph's response showed the difference in his reality. "Of course not. We've got
what we wanted. Where there's horse manure, there must be a horse!!!"
Have you ever had a lucid dream? One that seemed so real that you couldn't tell whether
you were awake or asleep? Almost everyone has.
Now ask yourself the difference between a dream that seems like reality and reality.
The answer would seem to be, "Not much."
Then ask yourself whether reality isn't really just a waking dream. Lots of people think it
is, including the "dean" of research into altered states of consciousness, Prof. Charles
Tart. In his book, "Waking Up," he talks extensively about awakening from the self-
imposed dreams of reality in which most of us trap ourselves.
Since youre constructing your own reality anyway, how about constructing a reality that
just right for you?
Thats what you can accomplish using the Cybernetic Transposition Super Three-Step.
The One Important Job of the Conscious Mind
After all of what Ive said about the conscious mind, you might be asking why we have
conscious minds, what are their purpose.
It took me a very long time to figure out the answer but once I hit on it, I was amazed that
I hadnt seen it sooner.
The one important job of the our conscious minds is to develop communication between
our True Self, the seat of our integrity, and our unconscious mind.
Becoming Lucky
Copyright 2002 by Stuart A. Lichtman
Page 22
When we do this, we start unconsciously creating what is right for us. And when we do,
our lives can become a heaven on earth, so to speak.
Ill talk more about that in Unadvertised Bonus #4, Locating Your True-Self.
The Bottom Line
Our extremely powerful brain/mind system is rather perfectly matched with the
complexity of the world. If we allow it and our mind to function harmoniously by
bringing it into alignment with our True-Self and Unconscious Life Plan, we can invent
an idyllic reality for ourselves one thats right for us. (Again, more about this in
Unadvertised Bonuses #4 and #5.)