The streetlight effect is a type of observational bias where people only look for whatever they are searching by looking where it is easiest. The search itself may be referred to as a drunkard’s search.
Taken from an old joke about a drunkard who is searching for something he has lost, the parable is told several ways but typically includes the following details:
A policeman sees a drunk man…
…searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, and that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, ‘this is where the light is.’
David H. Freedman apparently coined the phrase ‘streetlight effect,’ but the story and concept were used in the social sciences since at least 1964, by Abraham Kaplan, where he refers to this as ‘the principle of the drunkard’s search’
Science is divided. There are the Creationists who say that god created the universe, designed everything and all we can do is go with it.
And then there are the scientists who say: man is a machine, life is an accident, and their inquiry and methods are consistent with this context. As you may notice, I am not going to support or argue with either of them: both of them are theories from the limited perspective of the human mind. They all look under the streetlight.
What I am intending to talk about is what both miss.
Although in my coaching practice I see it clearly that NO ONE IS LOOKING… even when all the pieces they should look for are on the board… they look inside, in their minds… supposing that the answer to any question is there… ugh… talk about ineffectiveness…
But the difference between the two camps is most visible, when they talk about intrinsic motivation.
That small part, or aspect of a human that isn’t connected to the mind, isn’t connected to anything physical.
Call it the spirit, the spark, the divine part of a human. It shines through the eyes of a child, and then slowly dims in most people…
That part that knows that you are imbued with something that doesn’t come from the survival game of the genes, from the horizontal plane of dog eat dog world.
That you are in the world but not of the world
But it is also not part of the ‘positive thinking’, pious, all mind stuff. It is NOT mind. It is not even brain. Not thinking. It is what can be called Consciousness.
It is what can be called Self.
Timeless, and it is non-physical.
You can’t observe it in others… or if you can, it makes no sense to you. It is outside of what the mind can perceive: What sense is (when you say ‘it makes sense‘) is all the stuff the mind has stored and integrated into its knowledge base. The mind’s picture of reality. Shadows. But…
There is a you that is physical, and there is a YOU that is non-physical.
I am not concerned with what happens to the non-physical YOU after you die. I am not even concerned whether there is a personal non-physical YOU…
From your point of view there is, and that is going to be important, because unless it is personal, unless it feels personal, you won’t interact with it properly and personally.
So, for the sake of your functioning as a whole person, an Expanding Human Being, we are going to view you as someone who has two selves, the worldly self… and the divine Self, or intrinsic Self.
And the job is to start creating a coherent whole… instead of them remaining separate. At this stage you pray to the divine Self… as if it were some benevolent stranger, like a god.
I am not a philosopher… I am an empath.
One of my jobs as an empath is to create a bridge between observation, feeling and words… so you can start paying attention, so you can start looking for what you are seeking where it is, instead of out there, or out here.
The Spirit, the Intrinsic Self is like anything alive. When it is cut from its source, it starts wilting. Immediately.
The intrinsic Self is part of the Beyond (Beyond what the mind can conceive and see, beyond the five senses world, beyond the horizontal plane). So when I put it into words, it is still alive, but when your mind gets the words, it is wilting, or dead on arrival…
So whatever you are getting is like the cut flowers in a bouquet… they have no shelf life… and they look good, but it’s an illusion. They are already dead.
So what is there to do?
You see, the job of the activators, the job of the energies in the activators is this: to help you connect to that divine aspect of yourself, and not its shadow, not its mirage, not its mental image… to it, not the reflection of it.
As a teenager I was always in love with some illusion, some idea of a man… But didn’t know what to do with flesh and blood boys. I watch people pray to sculptures or paintings… it is the same. Idle worshiping.
I guess that is the idea behind Judaism’s prohibition to worship idols… you need to deal with the real thing… But to deal with it, you have to find it.
But the mind is not capable. The mind is a wholly horizontal plane phenomenon, while the Beyond, the divine part of you is in the vertical… it has no access from the horizontal.
So what is there to do?
The Indians started out right: you need to go within.
But show me an Indian, or anyone who actually does. They don’t…
Why? Because within is terrifying. There is nothing there… literally no thing. It’s empty.
And that feels like YOU are nothing… and that feels like death. It is death, in a way. It is the absence of the illusion that you are, the you that you perceive…
So people, pretending to meditate, escape into daydreaming, sleep, thought, or feeling, or itching, or fidgeting, or unconsciousness… as I have observed some students that meditated with me.
What can go beyond that abyss… beyond that emptiness, beyond that nothingness, is an aspect of you that is not connected to the horizontal, and yet it’s real. It is what I call attention/awareness. Attention, awareness is energy you have can learn to direct, to ramp up, to withdraw.
It is yours to operate. Yours. Your name is on the title. It’s like a new car parked in front of your house. You have the key in your pocket… But you don’t know the car is yours.
And unless you know and behave accordingly, unless you start driving it, the car will rust… unused.
I have asked Source if I could give you an activator to activate your awareness and your knowing of your tool: your awareness/attention.
The answer is NO. You have to find it…
That is the first step, and also the crucial step of connecting to the inner divine you, the vertical plane. Looking and finding.
It’s not an accident that everyone teaches that it is the mind that is doing it.
If you knew that you have attention, that tool, that can connect you to the divine, and then actually connect would render you not controllable, not sheep.
And the world prefers you to be sheep.
Sheep controlled and suppressed by other sheep.
Yes, the sheep that controls you is also sheep.
They would stop being sheep if they found the key… within. But they are terrified just like you are terrified.
My hunch is, it is hard work to remove all the crust, and the b.s. the world has placed upon you. The crap you placed upon yourself, trying to survive in a world that isn’t friendly to you.
Your first step to leave sheepdom…
…the horizontal field is to learn to direct your attention. To use your attention, use your awareness to actually look and see.
Don’t discount it: it is difficult. You’ve never done it… and everything is difficult in the very beginning.
You need to start small… It is detectable, sense-able when you redirect your mind-focused attention.
Your attention, at the present moment, is permanently looking at the mind.
You need to move it outwards…
Remember, you cannot start with the PhD level, you need to learn the moves of kindergarten level… move the attention outward.
And look. See. It is OK to label it… eventually. But beware: labeling too soon can take your attention back to the mind.
I used to have attention calisthenics in the olden days. And maybe I’ll start doing them again, but only for people who have the causing gene on this time around.
It will need a lot of practice… Because the ‘muscle’ that directs the attention has atrophied.
You have also stopped causing anything… including where your attention goes. Including where you put your energies. Including what to do with your life.
I am offering the DNA adjustment for a few days… the most important element of the adjustment is the causing gene… unless it’s on, you cannot, literally cannot direct your attention; instead your attention directs you…
Like a dog that is wagged by the tail. And you’ll go where attention takes you, even if it is deadly, even if the cost is tremendous… because you don’t have a choice.
When the causing gene is on you have power to steer your vehicle, you are not just a passenger in it.
The link is taken offline on Tuesday, January 2 midnight.
If you opt to get the adjustment, pay attention, close attention to what happens… if you don’t, it will pass and leave not even a residue… like a fart in a study hall… d.o.d.
A minor miracle happened yesterday morning… I found that one of my students who had willfully turned off The Sight capacity, unexpectedly allowed it to stay on. Or maybe it was a major miracle… we shall see.
I assert that what was underneath of that miracle is that I suggested that he can be polite when asks someone to back off and let him speak his piece.
He saw that he never looked to see if it was possible. He had only seen that to get something, you need to be haughty, bombastic, loud, rigid, forceful… and his sight got stuck there.
I have been looking at the traffic that comes to my site… and 99% of the people who come, leave empty handed.
Most people want to make more money. I don’t have what they want… I could only have what they need… so I have had nothing to offer them. I have thought of doing a money course… but have discarded it… It feels inauthentic for me to teach about money, given how mediocre my income is.
What you don’t know that you don’t know is really your blind spot. I have, must have, a big blind spot that I can’t, don’t want to, am afraid to make more money than is necessary to survive.
It’s not necessarily a lack of knowledge, or lack of work. It is that something stops me when the going gets good…
The capacity to see one’s way through, without the need to muddle through is possessed by about 1% of humanity.
It is the same capacity that can clearly see what your current actions will result in if you continue them.
It is the same capacity that can see what changes you need to make in your attitude and in your behavior to effect lasting change.
It is the rarest capacity… but it is also the hardest capacity to make work for you if you don’t have the habit of looking.
In a Landmark Education seminar, Inventing Yourself, there was a session where you were asked to stand in front of what you have never seen, what you can’t recognize from memory, and keep standing there until you see it. Continue reading “The capacity to see the consequences of your actions”
What capacity is missing so that you cannot tell, you cannot recognize the same thing in a different environment?
I think this is the main issue for people who cannot grow… even if they keep on having private sessions, do all my courses, or all Landmark courses, or all Mindvalley courses, or use energy stuff… mine or others’.
When you put something they know some other environment, they don’t recognize it in a different environment, a different context.
So what is the missing capacity, you wonder… And how can anyone dream up a method to teach it?
This article is not about the squirrels, it is about you. What you can see, what you can notice. Or don’t.
A minor miracle happened yesterday morning… I found that one of my students who had willfully turned off 
