The Broadband Connection. Alan Carroll

of years later, our brains have evolved. The human brain now has three parts: an outer cortex, a mid-brain, and a reptilian brain, which to this very day is still concerned about survival and the survival of whatever it considers itself to be. Understanding the it in whatever it considers itself to be is critical if you ever want to escape from the prison of your mind and experience life on the other side of the firewall.

      In using the pronoun it, I am referring to psychological concepts such as I, me, mind, ego, my story, myself, my interpretation, my beliefs, my database of thoughts, my point of view, my little story of me, etc.

      When you are born, your database of knowledge is empty. Thereafter, life becomes a conditioning process of filling your database with thoughts, education, and experiences. The thoughts and experiences you have depend on the environment into which you are born and the life experiences to which you are exposed.

      As a child, your awareness of this conditioning process is negligible and you really have little if any choice about what is being programmed into your database. For example, you are told your name, family, nationality, religion, tribe, sex, etc. You agree with these labels automatically. And, once you agree, they become the things you consider yourself to be. They become the I, the me, the ego, the mind.

      You are also programmed with a language, which are the word symbols or protocols your culture uses to communicate. For example, you asked your mother, “What is that?” and she said, “A tree.” And now, for the rest of your life, when you see an object that has a trunk and leaves, you know it’s a tree. It cannot show up in your conditioned conceptual reality as anything other than a tree.

      The word Tree is a mental label you place on an event that gives you the illusion of knowledge. As soon as you create the mental label it reduces the possibility of the event showing up as anything other than the label you put on it and traps you in a prison of “knowing.” However, being able to observe the part of you that automatically generates the label you place on every event in your life creates a space that leads you to a state of presence or stillness. Stillness could be defined as awareness without thought. In aware presence you don’t automatically label each event in your life and therefore, everything you see is a mystery.

      I suggest you change the labeling of your life events in this way: “We call that a tree,” “We call that the sun,” “We call you a woman,” etc. By shifting your language, you move from being trapped in an is world to living in a world of mystery, openness, and possibility.

      Einstein acknowledged this by saying that the knowledge we have accumulated so far is insufficient to get us to the next level of awareness.

      Growing up, you learn a variety of beliefs from your teachers, family, and direct experience, such as the following: The Earth is round, the Earth is the center of the universe, the Sun is the center of the universe, white people are bad, black people are good, communism is bad, socialism is good, democracy is great, and if you eat meat on Fridays, it is a sin.

      What does this all mean to you?

      As you evolve and become more conscious, you begin to distinguish your database of beliefs from the part of you that observes those beliefs. This is one of the most important distinctions you want to make in researching your own reality. All the spiritual teachers I have read and heard grapple with this concept of observer or witness. There is a separation between what you have identified yourself to be, which we call the I or me, and the observer of the I or me.

      How this distinction works in my reality is that when an event occurs in my field of now, I automatically put a label on it based on my past conditioning and then I notice the label I put on that event. As soon as I notice the label, the power it had over me is reduced. It is as though a gap is created between the event and the labeling of the event. I also notice that the labels I put on events stir up thoughts, images, and physical and emotional reactions. The major benefit I experience from being able to observe this labeling process is that my physical, emotional, and mental body enters a state of relaxation and calm. Examples of this labeling/relaxation process occur all the time—a cigarette being lighted, traffic jams, flight delays, late people, bad weather, the slaughter of whales, winning business contracts, losing business contracts—the list of events goes on and on.

      After a while, you begin to realize that you have been living your life in a state of unconsciousness or, as Eckhart Tolle would say, in a conditioned conceptual reality, programmed from birth, which you have unquestioningly believed to be the truth. It is not the truth—it is a truth. It is one possible interpretation, but it is not the only interpretation.

      If you live your life believing that yours is the right interpretation, then you are saying that your reality is correct and everybody else’s reality is wrong. This is not a very satisfying strategy to use to play the game of life because your beliefs (i.e., truths) will end up conflicting with other people’s beliefs, which creates a state of disharmony for you.

      How does this understanding of the I, me, mind, etc. affect your ability to be a successful IT presenter? The firewall is created by the I, me, mind to protect itself from harm. It views the audience as a threat to its survival, which reduces the quality and effectiveness of your throughput.

      It has often been said that most people’s number one fear is not death but public speaking. What you often find in presenters is a deep psychological concern for safety and survival. These fears arise out of putting the I, the me, the little story of me, the ego, the mind, my database, my point of view, etc. on display in front of other people. Being on display makes one vulnerable to attack, ridicule, embarrassment, and psychological annihilation.

      When asked to describe these fears and barriers, one often hears words such as “I will be embarrassed,” “I will look stupid,” “I will do something weird, strange, or odd,” “I will be nervous, anxious, go crazy, or lose control,” “I will die (ego),” “I will be uncomfortable,” “I will do something unnatural, which will not be me,” “I will look unprofessional, inappropriate, and be rejected.”

      All these thoughts evolve from an underlying unconscious fear that if the I lets go of control, if the I lets go of its firewall, the I will be annihilated. And, in one sense, this is true. The I will be annihilated. And yet, as stated in The Way of Transformation, “It is only by exposing oneself over and over again to annihilation that the indestructible Being within each person can arise.” This is a wonderful quote that was given to me by one of my teachers, Werner Erhard, and I pass it on to you.

      When you have the courage to risk being open, authentic, and vulnerable in front of the audience, you are given the key that releases you from the prison of your mind. What is on the other side of those prison walls? What is on the other side of your firewall? There, you’ll find the freedom from suppression and the freedom to express yourself fully with power, commitment, and clarity.

      In taking this risk you are shifting from a 56k connection to a full-duplex, present-time, broadband connection to the audience. This is the direction to go in order to expand your ability to be an effective presenter in front of an IT audience.

      The fear has its origin in what you suspect the audience will think about you when you are talking in front of the group. When you present a piece of data from your internal database, you are presenting a little piece of what you consider yourself to be. You worry, “Does the audience like me or does the audience not like me?” You care about what the audience thinks, which blocks the broadband flow of energy. Every time you speak, you wait for an echo to come back from the audience saying, “We still love you.”

      This psychological consternation lasts until you eventually say to yourself, “I don’t care anymore about what the audience thinks about me.” When you don’t care anymore, you are no longer inhibited by the audience. You are free and move, as George Bernard Shaw said, from being “a feverish, selfish little clog of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy” to the broadband world of present time, love, and compassion.