Category Archives: Coaching

Coaching the coaches

Coaching the coaches

by Jon Rappoport

August 4, 2017

“Systems are fine, they’re good. But when people become attached to them, obsessed with them, want to operate inside them, that’s trouble. A person is not a system.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

I wrote and published a series of articles on coaching. The project started when I received a query from a coach about my consulting services.

From the start, coaches face a peculiar situation. Their clients generally want systems.

Their clients are used to systems and want a better one.

But the truth is, most people don’t need a better system. They need to be spontaneous.

Spontaneity naturally flows as a side effect of imagination.

Imagination is the North Star. It is the faculty that is least understood and least sought after in our society.

People tend to say two things about imagination: it is a mysterious talent reserved for the few, or it is a toy for children’s fantasies that should be purged with the onset of adulthood.

Both of these assessments are completely false.

In coaching clients, whether the subject is personal problems, personal goals, business success, or success in relationships, I have never failed to find that imagination is the missing key.

But you see, imagination follows no system. It can’t be produced by building a machine that routinely turns it out. Imagination doesn’t operate according to formulas.

I fully understand that, as a coach, if you teach your client a better system, you may obtain results in the short-term. After a series of sessions, you and the client can walk away from each other and feel happy. But as time moves on, that client will discover his better system is breaking down. Yes, it can be laid over life like a grid, but eventually life will prove to be the winner.

Why? Because what life is asking for is imagination.

Imagination is the capacity to make quantum leaps and see realities that have not yet been created. It’s the capacity, when deployed, to invent those new realities.

It works in relationships, in achieving personal goals, in discovering new goals, in succeeding in business—in every aspect of life.

Because people live their whole adult lives ignoring and burying imagination, they are going to feel at a loss, when asked to tap into it. Where is it? In the hall closet, in the attic, in the garage, on the moon? And if they could find it, what would they do with it? Pet it on the head, feed it roast beef, take it for a walk, give it vitamins, play classical music for it?

For 99% of the population, this is an unexplored area. But you as a coach need to know about it. You need to understand it. You need to be intimately familiar with it. You need to be using it in your own life, above all. Every day. You need to be immersed in it. Breathing it.

Ultimately, life is an open available space for those who live through and by imagination.

—For engineers, architects, researchers, businesspeople, teachers, scholars, administrators, husbands, wives, children, workers, artists—for everyone.

The funny thing is, you can be working within the tightest system in the world, and if you deploy your imagination and come up with a solution that is innovative, making the system better—people will say, “This is wonderful. Why didn’t we think of it?” They didn’t think of it because they were thinking and perceiving inside the system.

On the surface, all human relationships may seem to exist in the framework of a system. But those relationships are actually waiting for imagination to exert a transforming effect, a transforming moment, and then people suddenly brighten, open up, and think:

“This is what being alive is.”

They’re right.

Exit From the Matrix

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

COACHING THE COACHES, PART 23

 

COACHING THE COACHES,

PART 23

 

by Jon Rappoport

Copyright © 2011 by Jon Rappoport

 

 

The decay of society can be traced to missed opportunities of imagination:

 

great projects and enterprises, born in imagination, but left on the drawing board.

 

Instead energies have been poured into programs that seek to cure a passivity which can, in the long run, only be alleviated by internally driven inspiration.

 

However you wish to diagram the course of civilization, the line eventually returns to this creative force: it is there or it is isn’t.

 

Technology, for example, points toward the stars. Whether we go depends on how we feel about the prospect of endless exploration. And how we feel comes back to the condition of our own imaginations.

 

Most people don’t care to take this long view. They prefer to search out comfortable niches for themselves and shield their minds from larger possibilities.

 

Reinvigoration falls to leaders. What are their visions, priorities, and ambitions? If they are reduced to promoting empty goals merely to stabilize their own positions, then the decay will continue.

 

Competing groups will attempt to siphon money and support from an establishment they profess to hate. All sorts of sour ironies will develop. While waving flags of various causes and claiming the highest ideals, people will work, undercover, for their own primacy.

 

At bottom, the principle is this: once people see how imagination in action can lead us to a new platform of existence in this world, they will respond. They will recognize the thrill of the New.

 

The basis for everything I’m mentioning here is the individual, and what the individual is willing to conceive.

 

Whether in the home, in school, in the workplace, in the media, if individuals are shown that the human race is drastically limited in what it can reasonably hope for, then there is no launching pad for a future of dreams.

 

Again, the very notion of limitation means: no imagination.

 

Ultimately, restricted limits aren’t based on boundaries of realistic expectations; they are based on what is failing to happen in the minds of individuals.

 

That is where it starts, or ends.

 

How do you choose?

 

What is your life all about?

 

Many years ago, I had several conversations with a renowned psychologist. He explained to me that the function of therapy was to restore a person’s ability to live within the framework of established society.

 

To fit in? I asked him.

 

Yes, he said. Any serious deviation from that norm was a clear sign of neurosis. To repair it was the goal.

 

He assured me that mental health was equivalent to “finding a place in the established order of things,” and it was this discovery that gave us a key to the future.

 

So, I said, everyone should be the same?

 

The same in his own way, he said.

 

At the time, I was astounded at this enormous piece of sophistry.

 

As time passed, I saw that his agenda was proceeding in much wider terms. But I always came back to the individual, because I never believed that external deception was sufficient to render people into a passive state.

 

There was, and is, always the possibility of a breakout. The individual can take back his own life, and he can take back his imagination, which exceeds by light years the territory of “normalcy.”

 

When imagination is left out of the formula of psychology, all resolutions of problems circle the drain and become debilitating roles in a play that shrinks in each succeeding scene and act—until finally a person is reduced to taking mechanical actions in a mechanical landscape.

 

We have never had a real philosophy of imagination.

 

In many articles, books, and lectures, I have made it my job to supply one.

 

–This is the final article in the Coaching the Coaches series. For now.

 

 

Jon Rappoport

A former candidate for a US Congressional seat in California, Jon has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years. He has written articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. The author of The Ownership of All Life, Jon has maintained a consulting practice for the past 15 years. He has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, and creativity to audiences around the world.

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

COACHING THE COACHES, PART 22

COACHING THE COACHES,

PART 22

by Jon Rappoport

Copyright © 2011 by Jon Rappoport

We’ve all experienced wrestling with a problem.

We attack it from many sides and it doesn’t go away.

We begin to think it can’t be solved, that we just can’t get past the obstacles. Other people are born to transcend the problem, but we aren’t. We’re fated to live with the stone around our necks.

But the problem has its own spaces and energies and boundaries and limitations—a complex architecture. In order for the problem to be resolved or defeated, we have to EXCEED that architecture. If we don’t, we just (literally) go from pillar to post and increase our level of frustration.

Think of it this way. A major problem is like a few square city blocks wrapped in fog. We can see the outlines of certain buildings, we can see a certain amount of space, we can view a certain number of pedestrians and drivers. This is not entirely unfamiliar territory. In fact, some places in those blocks are very familiar. We’ve walked the ground many times before.

We try to re-navigate the whole area again, one more time, to see if we can pick up clues we’ve missed. We try to arm ourselves with new approaches. Maybe if we walk over THERE first and look from that vantage point, maybe if we take an elevator inside THAT building, we can rise to a new height and see the area with a different perspective. Maybe if we sit in a parked car and watch the street…

It doesn’t work.

It doesn’t work because, in a sense, we’re playing a role that is built to have the problem and keep having the problem. This role has its own spaces and energies and structures and ideas.

So we need to…play other roles. We need to loosen up the prevailing architecture.

Which is exactly what happens in the Magic Theater.

There is no rote formula that instructs what roles to play. But the direction is clear.

“Okay, you play your problem. You speak AS the problem. I’ll play a person who has transcended the problem. We’ll talk. Then we’ll switch roles.”

“Okay, you play a magician who can dissolve the problem with a wave of his hand. I’ll play a person who doesn’t believe magic exists.”

“You play a miser. I’ll play a playboy millionaire jet-setter.”

“You play a government official whose job it is to pay me for having the problem. I’ll play the person with the problem.”

“You play someone who solved the problem by committing a crime. I’ll play the prosecutor who is trying you for the crime.”

“You play a victim who makes a career out of having the problem. I’ll play the actual solution to the problem.”

“You play Unlimited Energy. I’ll play A Deficit of Energy.”

“You play The Money That Could Solve The Problem. I’ll play a thief.”

“You play a relative who doesn’t want you to solve the problem. I’ll play you.”

And so forth and so on.

Attacking it from many sides.

Walls crumble and go down. New light comes in. Energies flow and become available.

We all live to some degree embedded in problem-consciousness. Which means we see problems all over the place and we try to solve them by taking straight-line actions. Sometimes we succeed, but a few big problems remain, and as we increase our efforts to deal with these big ones, we become locked in tighter in our roles and, therefore, less able to bring about resolutions. Stress accumulates, the physical consequences of which multiply, distracting us. We try harder, but when the big problems just sit there, we can summon less energy. We become more passive.

The Magic Theater is an innovation that can take us beyond this pattern.

We’re no longer the actor who is playing the same role every night in a long-running drama that has the same ending. We’re trying on many new roles, and this becomes a revelation.

The problem no longer looks and feels the way it did. The fog lifts.

Jon Rappoport

A former candidate for a US Congressional seat in California, Jon has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years. He has written articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. The author of The Ownership of All Life, Jon has maintained a consulting practice for the past 15 years. He has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, and creativity to audiences around the world.

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

COACHING THE COACHES, PART 21

 

COACHING THE COACHES,

PART 21

 

by Jon Rappoport

Copyright © 2011 by Jon Rappoport

 

 

It’s part of the lesson of modern society that the individual is small.

 

It’s easy to overlook the fact that, as a coach, you are working with individuals who are trying to solve their lives within very, very restrictive boundaries. The real problem is the boundaries themselves.

 

You’re basically working with a person who is sitting in a projection booth above a theater that is a hundred miles wide and a hundred miles deep, and he’s using a camera that will cast an image on a six-inch screen.

 

And he wants to clarify that image. He wants to improve its focus. He wants to get the dust off the lens.

 

If you choose to help him do these things, you will, sooner or later, arrive at a point where no amount of fiddling produces dividends. Your client will tell you he’s still not satisfied. He needs to sweep the floor of the booth. He needs a better broom. He needs to fortify the spindly legs of the six-inch screen.

 

It will occur to you he’s obsessed. But this obsession is, of course, connected to the actual size of the actual theater—the dimensions of which he denies.

 

That’s why he’s developing a full-fledged fetish.

 

That why he has an itch he can’t scratch. He knows, at some level, that he has titanic space at his disposal, but he wants to keep his blinders on.

 

He wants to keep them on and he wants to take them off. He wants to play out his life as a cameo, and he wants to play it out in full. He wants yes and no.

 

He looks to you for help.

 

Yes, the deck is stacked against you. But you knew that, didn’t you? The game is rigged from the start. It always is. That’s the beauty of it, in a way. You’re there to expose the bigger picture. You lead him to new lands. Then he sees how he has been taking those shrinking pills he keeps in his closet. He sees it.

 

And how do you accomplish this feat?

 

That’s why I’ve written the 20 articles previous to this one in the series.

 

Because that theater that’s a hundred miles wide and a hundred miles deep is imagination.

 

 

Jon Rappoport

A former candidate for a US Congressional seat in California, Jon has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years. He has written articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. The author of The Ownership of All Life, Jon has maintained a consulting practice for the past 15 years. He has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, and creativity to audiences around the world.

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

COACHING THE COACHES, PART 20

 

COACHING THE COACHES,

PART 20

 

by Jon Rappoport

Copyright © 2011 by Jon Rappoport

 

 

I’ll try to break it down.

 

The basic operating principle is: A HUMAN IS TRYING TO DEAL WITH INTERNAL ENERGIES THAT DON’T FIT INTO THE FAMILIAR PATTERN OF CONSENSUS REALITY. THESE ENERGIES ARE “BIGGER” THAN CONSENSUS REALITY. THEY’RE STRONGER.

 

So, in retreat and avoidance, he adopts formulations like: “things are exactly what they seem to be”; “I’m fitting in”; “I’m weak” “I have lots of problems.”

None of these formulations is an honest assessment. They are all ways of trying to obscure energies that do not fit the rules of a conformist society. The person subconsciously knows he is engaged with strong energies that don’t find a comfortable niche in consensus reality. He isn’t sure what to do.

 

So he invents a shorthand formulation he thinks and hopes will obscure these powerful energies and put them into a quiet state.

 

Over time, there are many side effects from trying to keep the lid on the pot. Physical, mental, emotional side effects.

 

Meanwhile, these superficial “reality-formulations” are projected out into the world. They’re projected because a human being is always projecting something.

 

So there he is, projecting: “everything is exactly what people say it is.”

 

And he’s doing this because, underneath it all, he is dealing with powerful energies that are locked up and he doesn’t know to handle them. He believes that, if he directly expresses them, he’ll do something that will land him in trouble. He’ll exceed the expectations of other people. He’ll appear very odd. And he doesn’t want trouble.

 

So instead, he projects a shallow formulation of reality.

 

It is common to find amateurs and professionals profiling other people vis-a-vis their family lives, their relationships—we have the enablers and the co-dependents and the rival siblings and the authority figures and the passive-aggressives…

 

All this is really an attempt to differentiate between: conforming and expressing the powerful energies within.

 

Because that’s what’s at stake here.

 

When a person begins to express the powerful energies, he enters a new realm.

 

Events then play out in new ways. They don’t always follow the conventional and expected formula of serial cause and effect.

 

So in a society based on repression and denial, it’s no surprise that, as time passes, enforcement measures and surveillance techniques and even career choices coalesce into a manual of behavior. The prescription becomes: act out your part in a fashion that will maintain your membership card in The Group. Evade detection. Keep the door to your psyche locked.

 

Simultaneously, in the modern version of Bread and Circuses, movies and television depict more and more characters who break all the rules and operate in a paranormal (magical) landscape. This is the safety valve. As you once could have watched a lion eating a Christian in the Colosseum, you can now watch a technologically or genetically enhanced man breaking the side of the building with his fist or throwing a burning car into a crowd.

 

It’s the vicarious version of what people imagine will happen if they giver vent to their deep psychic energies.

 

I assure you, the pretension that develops around the problem of how to deal with energies of the psyche is titanic. It is ubiquitous. It is ongoing. It involves “philosophies” and “spiritual paths” that try their very best to appear reasonable and hopeful and transcendent. In the end, these systems are new labyrinths built on older mazes.

 

The original problem remains.

 

The individual is dealing with his fear of expressing energies that spill over beyond the strictures of The Group.

 

All modern societies have a passion for organization that turns into an obsession. Structures and institutions are built to hold down “excess” energies and channel them into minor streams.

 

(In my two audio seminars:Mind Control, Mind Freedom, and The Transformations, I describe exercises that can help liberate the energies of the psyche through the use of imagination.)

 

The truth is, you can express your power without wreaking havoc. You can achieve the kind of life you dream about.

 

 

Jon Rappoport

A former candidate for a US Congressional seat in California, Jon has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years. He has written articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. The author of The Ownership of All Life, Jon has maintained a consulting practice for the past 15 years. He has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, and creativity to audiences around the world.

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

PART 19, COACHING THE COACHES

 

COACHING THE COACHES,

PART 19

 

by Jon Rappoport

Copyright © 2011 by Jon Rappoport

 

 

A client wrote me the following note, to describe his progress:

 

“At first, the biggest and best thing I envisioned doing with my life was actually confined in a tunnel. I didn’t know I was in a tunnel. I thought I was in open space. I was inspired by my vision. But after doing your imagination exercises for a month, and after planning how I would achieve my vision, I saw all sorts of new implications. My plan got much bigger all of a sudden. And then I really was in open space. I wasn’t in the tunnel anymore.”

 

This is how things take off.

 

It’s as if, previously, there were holes in our perception, areas we weren’t seeing. But then, once imagination swung into gear, those holes filled in, they came to life.

 

People often like to cite Apple as an example of a truly creative company. It’s clear that, as Steve Jobs moved forward with new inventions, his imagination spread wider, and he realized, quite quickly, how the future would include innovations springing from what he was already building. There was a multiplying effect. The force of that is virtually unstoppable.

 

It’s the same with any life plan or vision—IF imagination is a person’s constant companion, instead of a one-time burst that fades away.

 

To put it another way, which wave are you riding? Is it the one that appeared with your initial vision? Are you focusing so narrowly on it you can’t conceive of anything wider? Or are you riding a wave that gives birth to higher and greater waves that appear as a result of enlivened imagination?

 

You have an idea for a store. The store will sell copies of ancient artifacts. Once you flesh out the operation and are in business, it occurs to you you can sell other items. Local original art, jewelry, musical instruments, etc. You bring in musicians to do live concerts. Pretty soon, you have a unique store that draws in people from miles away. You have 20 such stores across the country.

 

That sort of thing.

 

The multiplying and expansive effect of imagination at work. A larger growing vision.

 

This is as far away from a single, one-shot “envisioning moment” as a vaguely strumming guitar is from a 50-piece orchestra.

 

The bigger the vision, the more wider ranging it is, the more power you have.

 

 

Jon Rappoport

A former candidate for a US Congressional seat in California, Jon has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years. He has written articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. The author of The Ownership of All Life, Jon has maintained a consulting practice for the past 15 years. He has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, and creativity to audiences around the world.

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

PART 18, COACHING THE COACHES

 

COACHING THE COACHES,

PART 18

 

by Jon Rappoport

Copyright © 2011 by Jon Rappoport

 

 

Many people are involved in the selling of quick-fixes to the population. A pill for this, a pill for that, a pill for everything. A two-hour seminar, after which you’ll somehow become a real estate genius. Having problems with your children? In two minutes, an expert can show you how to restore order to your home. Unhappy with your life? Repeat a positive affirmation for a month and you’ll be cured.

 

These are all, of course, marketing ploys. And they often work—in the sense that the marketers are happy.

 

Such schemes operate at about the level of intelligence of the mythical King Midas, who was granted the power to turn to gold whatever he touched. It never occurred to Midas that his food and his friends and his family would become indigestible and dead.

 

Imagination, which has been the core subject of this series, has many aspects. For example, it elevates and expands a person’s vision of his possible future. In other words, this vision isn’t a one-time shot.

 

If you can inhabit imagination, your most inspiring idea about what to do with your life grows. It widens. It develops new branches. It creates more space.

 

This process brings to light levels of feeling that had remained in the shadows. These feelings match the expansiveness of the vision. Over time, the entire character of a person’s emotional life changes. Which, when you think about it, is what people want in the first place. They want to feel different. They want gloom to be replaced by optimism. They want doubt to give way to confidence. They want cynicism to transform into joy.

 

Imagination gives you the initial idea about a new future, the initial vision. Living in imagination expands that vision. Living in imagination raises the entire level of emotional existence as you pursue the attainment of the vision.

 

This whole process is really the challenge of life, and the coach can help his client meet it.

 

This is, indeed, on a personal level, a revolution.

 

I’ve seen brilliant people settle for a thousandth of what they actually want in life. They apply their intelligence to the art of “fitting in.” Finding a niche. Exploiting a minor possibility. They’re convinced it’s the smart thing to do.

 

What this strategy amounts to is making an assessment of “what society has to offer.”

 

“Let’s see, I can do A,B, C, D, or E. These are the options open to me. Let me choose carefully.”

 

It’s looking at What Exists as opposed to What Could Be Created.

 

And since most people don’t take seriously the idea that they can create anything, they look for a system they can build a career in. A system that’s already there.

 

Having once enlisted in the system, their best efforts, after that point, will involve improving the system, usually in some tiny way.

 

And there they are.

 

This doesn’t make them happy, but they think it’s the best they can do, under the circumstances.

 

And then, as the years roll by, feeling unhappy, they might opt for some quick-fix sales pitch that promises instant gratification.

 

These quick fixes take a snapshot of one little corner of imagination and sell it back to the prospective customer.

 

“Here’s your own imagination—buy it. It’ll make you rich.”

 

For a moment or two, as long as it takes to punch in an 800 number and give credit-card numbers to an operator, the customer is looking at his own imagination and feeling a surge of possibility. A brief tingle.

 

But of course, he doesn’t understand the dynamic of what’s happening.

 

What I’m saying in this series is: let’s start with imagination and name it and describe it, because it’s the wellspring and the fountain and the force and the power that transforms life and emotion. Let’s start there. Let’s not opt for substitutes. Let’s not merely reflect back a snapshot or a symbol of one’s own imagination and call it a product for sale or a service for sale.

 

Let’s begin with the real thing, in all its majesty and variety.

 

If we do that, we soon see that the process by which one creates a future he truly and profoundly wants is ongoing. It’s the substance of a whole life. It’s a great adventure.

 

And the more a person engages and deploys his own imagination, the larger the field of success, the greater the odds of success. Over time, those odds keep stacking up higher and higher, in the person’s favor. With enough work and enough follow-through and enough sensible planning and execution, the result is so gratifying the person looks back and wonders how he could have ever thought of his life any differently—because This Is It.

 

 

Jon Rappoport

A former candidate for a US Congressional seat in California, Jon has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years. He has written articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. The author of The Ownership of All Life, Jon has maintained a consulting practice for the past 15 years. He has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, and creativity to audiences around the world.

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

PART 17, COACHING THE COACHES

 

COACHING THE COACHES,

PART 17

 

by Jon Rappoport

Copyright © 2011 by Jon Rappoport

 

 

When you look at the lives of most people, you see they’ve settled in. Which is to say, they’ve subconsciously established limits and boundaries, and they live inside that space.

 

When you look at a machine, you can see it’s designed to function within specified limits. For instance, a plane can only fly so fast. And if it slows down below a certain point, it ceases to stay in the air.

 

If you want to extend the capability of a plane, you apply knowledge to it; using that knowledge, you re-build it so it can go faster.

 

But a person is different. What lies beyond his boundaries is not so much knowledge as it is his own imagination. That’s the key.

 

And imagination invents the not-yet-seen, the never-before.

 

Many people feel more comfortable with technology, with machines. Thus all the science fiction about societies where robots have been harnessed to provide the essentials and the luxuries. This seems doable. This seems interesting.

 

Machines, though, are not alive. No matter how many possibilities are imputed to them, they don’t think independently. They follow instructions. They obey embedded principles and systems of calculation.

 

Imagination is alive. It exemplifies life. Its energy is living.

 

We are at the point where choices will be made about what kind of civilization we are going to have. Will it be all about technology? Or will individual imagination finally receive its due?

 

Scientists, by their very nature and training, tend to believe the brain (which they assert covers the entire waterfront of mind, imagination, psyche, soul) operates according to algorithms. Discovering these instructional formulas would put us in control of the brain. The holy grail.

 

This is a delusion.

 

Whatever can be induced by making chemical and electrical alterations to the brain simply trades one sensation for another. Whereas imagination creates realities and futures.

 

Whenever an individual decides to live through and by imagination, he incidentally adds to the possibility of a more positive society.

 

Spinning off from quantum physics, the rise of wild theories like parallel universes and multiple realities suggests that some scientists are actively looking for ways to escape the trap of no-imagination. But instead of searching for novelty within themselves, they export it to the cosmos.

 

What does all this add up to? A person and a civilization can find all sorts of ways to avoid and postpone an era of imagination. But if you look at the tremendous amount of energy employed for such avoidance, you obtain a clue. Burying imagination is hard to do.

 

It’s here to stay.

 

So why not admit it and use it in copious quantities?

 

Why not end the old era of limits?

 

As a coach, you certainly can’t assume your client is aware of all these factors, but you can be aware of them. And that inner surety can propel you to accomplish important breakthroughs in your work.

 

 

Jon Rappoport

A former candidate for a US Congressional seat in California, Jon has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years. He has written articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. The author of The Ownership of All Life, Jon has maintained a consulting practice for the past 15 years. He has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, and creativity to audiences around the world.

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

PART 16, COACHING THE COACHES

 

COACHING THE COACHES,

PART 16

 

by Jon Rappoport

Copyright © 2011 by Jon Rappoport

 

 

One of the imagination exercises I’ve developed is called Life Story.

 

I don’t use it very often, but when it fits a client, it can produce remarkable results.

 

It’s a dialogue in which I play the part of an interviewer. I ask lots of questions about the client’s life and history—and the client’s job is to make up a life he never had.

 

A completely fictional past and present.

 

“Where did you grow up?”

 

“On an apple farm in Oregon. My father was a winemaker who switched to apples after he became an alcoholic.”

 

“Were you a good student in school?”

 

“I never went to a formal school. I was taught by a local poet. At age five, I was registered in kindergarten, but on the first day I got into a fight with another boy, and I was brought in front of the principal. He and my father were already enemies. He had claimed my father cheated him on a property sale. So he expelled me from school. I was elated that I didn’t have to go back there. On the way home that afternoon, a bee stung me. I was walking through some brush, and I tripped on a log. I was lying on the ground in puddle of water, and as I got up, a bee landed on my arm and stung it…”

 

The more specifics the better.

 

An invented life.

 

The interview can go on over the course of a dozen sessions, hour after hour.

 

When people do this exercise thoroughly, they begin to realize the life they actually have can be changed. Can be re-imagined and created.

 

This is yet another illustration of how powerful imagination is. You make up a life, and you see clearly how the life you have now, which operates with less creativity, can be launched in a new direction.

 

A principle emerges: that which has more imagination trumps that which has less imagination.

 

“So you say your sister ran off and married a horse trainer? And she went to law school and became a prosecutor? What cases did she try?”

 

“There was a fairly well-known murder trial in Missouri. A man had gone into a market looking for his friend. The friend wasn’t there, the clerk told him. So the man shot him three times. The whole town was horrified…”

 

“And you flew out to help her, you say?”

 

“Well, she had a boyfriend who was running a small trucking business, and when my sister won a popular conviction against the killer, the boyfriend started getting lots of new clients. I went there to drive a truck for him for a few months. I needed a job. I was just out of college, and I was being turned down by employers, because I’d led protests against the war in Viet Nam…”

 

Bit by bit, piece by piece in the interview, a person builds up a life he never had.

 

In ordinary life, many people lie to try to escape situations they feel are intolerable. In Life Story, a person fabricates a life and then he can go on to imagine a new future and actually create it as a truth.

 

 

Jon Rappoport

A former candidate for a US Congressional seat in California, Jon has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years. He has written articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. The author of The Ownership of All Life, Jon has maintained a consulting practice for the past 15 years. He has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, and creativity to audiences around the world.

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

PART 15, COACHING THE COACHES

 

COACHING THE COACHES,

PART 15

 

by Jon Rappoport

Copyright © 2011 by Jon Rappoport

 

 

In our society, there is a rite of passage into adulthood. It’s quite simple.

 

A young person decides on a course of action that will considerably diminish his imagination.

 

It doesn’t matter what particular career path is chosen. The basic feature is: it requires “much less imagination.”

 

Every day, thousands of youngsters undergo this rite.

 

Years later, they wonder what happened.

 

But they don’t really think it’s in their best interests to remember what happened; because if they did, they would reawaken the most fundamental core of their consciousness, and they would probably abandon the careers they’ve so carefully crafted.

 

No, it’s better to forget and keep forgetting.

 

But now they’re experiencing problems, and they feel they need help, and they come to you, the coach.

 

That’s the situation.

 

So are you going to try to tinker with and fix “what’s wrong?”

 

Is that your mission in life?

 

“Hi. I’m the tinkerer. I’m here to adjust the lights and check the on-board computer.”

 

If so, how is that going?

 

The dynamic of the situation is obvious. The elephant in the room is not being addressed. On some level, the client realizes it. When he’s fed up, he goes elsewhere.

 

But again, we come back to the paradox. He wants to recover his imagination. But he doesn’t want to. He’d dedicated to living without imagination. But he realizes that’s what’s missing from his life. It doesn’t matter that this push-pull is operating at a subconscious level. It’s operating.

 

What are you going to do?

 

I’ve faced this question many times. I’ve tried all sorts of approaches. In the end, I realized why I was really doing the work: to reawaken imagination. That’s why I was there. The choice, then, became clear.

 

Fortunately, I had vast experience in the area of changing my own life, and that experience had to do with writing and painting. I had seen what happened when I began living through and by imagination. The mists cleared and the questions dissolved. The doubts faded. The energy came back and the thrill expanded. The future opened up.

 

So the notion of working with another person to wake up his imagination wasn’t just a shot in the dark. It made complete sense. It was a radical step, but it made sense.

 

Take that as a clue. What are doing with your imagination? How important is it to you?

 

Some of the greatest developments of the past 200 years have been based on organization, systems, and technology. Put together, they’re a formidable force. However, in the process, something has been lost, misplaced. And people feel that loss. They may not be able to pinpoint its nature, but they sense it.

 

A person looks out at the world and says, “Look at all the technology. Look at all the organization and the systems. In my life, am I going to fit myself into that nexus, or am I going to go with my imagination?”

 

What a no-brainer. In conventional terms, the person picks the winner. He joins the team. He enlists in the system.

 

And then he induces a layer of amnesia about his own creative power.

 

He’s surrendered something vital.

 

He’s made a “this or that” configuration, and he chose.

 

Now, as the coach, it’s your job, should you decide to accept it, to undo that.

 

Your odds of success may seem long. It might appear you’re trying to swim up a waterfall. But you see, if you think that way, that’s YOUR rationalization. That’s the story you tell YOURSELF.

 

Actually, we’re living in a vast sea of imagination, and we’re surrounded by products and outcomes of imagination. And the idea of relinquishing imagination is, from that point of view, preposterous.

 

But you have to know that. You have to know it in your bones.

 

If you do, your work becomes a fascinating challenge.

 

We live in a world that abounds in paradoxes: “I want this but I don’t want this. Things I really want tend to slip away. Things I don’t really want come to me. I’m in the right system, but the system doesn’t give me what I really need. I’m good at planning, but what I plan for doesn’t work out. I try hard. Maybe I need to try less.”

 

This wall of static is transcended and neutralized, to an astonishing degree, by graduating into a realm where IMAGINATION and CREATING are the motive forces, the modes of transportation.

 

 

Jon Rappoport

A former candidate for a US Congressional seat in California, Jon has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years. He has written articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. The author of The Ownership of All Life, Jon has maintained a consulting practice for the past 15 years. He has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, and creativity to audiences around the world.

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com