Using Your Brain —for a CHANGE

Being right, or certain, is the second disease. Certainty is where people stop thinking and stop noticing. Any time you feel absolutely certain of something, that's a sure sign that you have missed something. It's sometimes convenient to deliberately ignore something for a while, but if you're absolutely certain, you'll probably miss it forever.

It's easy for certainty to sneak up on you. Even people who are uncertain are usually certain about that, too. Either they're sure they're sure, or they're sure they're unsure. Rarely do you find someone who is uncertain about his doubt or uncertain about his certainty. You can create that experience, but you don't usually encounter it. You can ask someone, "Are you sure enough to be unsure?" That's a stupid question, but he won't be sure anymore after you ask it.

The third disease is importance, and self–importance is the worst of all. As soon as one thing is "important," then other things aren't. Importance is a great way to justify being mean and destructive, or doing anything else that's unpleasant enough to need justification.

These three diseases are the way most people get stuck. You may decide something is important, but you can't get really serious about it until you're certain that it's important. At that point you stop thinking altogether. The Ayatollah Khomeni is an excellent example — but you can find lots of other examples closer to home.

Once I pulled up in front of the grocery store in a small town I used to live near. A guy came running over and said angrily, "My friend said you flipped me off"

"I don't think so; do you want me to?"

"Let me tell you something — "

I said, "Wait just one minute," and went into the store and shopped.

When I came back out, he was still out there! When I walked up to my car, he was panting with anger. I picked up a bag of groceries and handed it to him, and he took it. I opened the car door, put the other three bags in the car, took the bag from him and got in the car and closed the door. Then I said, "All right, if you insist" flipped the bird at him, and started to drive away.

As I drove away he burst out laughing hysterically, because I simply would not take him seriously.

For most people, "getting stuck" is wanting something and not getting it. Very few people can pause at that point and question their certainty that this thing is seriously important to them. However, there is another kind of being stuck that no one notices: Not wanting something and not having it. That is the greatest limitation of all, because you don't even know you're stuck, I'd like you to think about something that you now recognize is very useful or enjoyable or pleasurable. . . .

Now go back to an earlier time in your life, when you didn't even know about that, or you knew about it but it didn't mean anything to you. ...

You really didn't know what you were missing, did you? You had no idea how you were stuck back there, and you weren't motivated to change it. You were certain that your understanding was an accurate representation of the world. That's when you're really stuck. What are you missing now? . . .

Certainty probably impedes human progress more than any other state of mind. However, certainty, like anything else, is a subjective experience that you can change. Pick a fairly detailed memory in which you were absolutely certain that you understood something. You were in a learning experience; perhaps you were being taught. Maybe it was hard, maybe it was easy, but at a certain time you got that "Oooh, yes! I understand!" feeling. Remember it in as much detail as you need. . . ,

Now I want you to remember all that backwards, just like running a movie backwards. . . .

When you're done, think about whatever it is that you learned or understood. Is it the same as it was a few minutes ago?

Marty: When I played the picture forwards, I went from a state of confusion to "Aha! I understand!" And then when I ran it backwards, I ended up at the place where I was confused.

Yes, that's running it backwards. What is your experience now, when you think about whatever it is that you were certain you understood a few minutes ago?

Marty: Well, I'm back at the confusion state, and yet part of me knows that I still have the understanding that came later. I can't create the same total feeling of confusion that I had the first time. But I'm not as certain, either.

How about the rest of you. Is it the same?

Ben: Well, I learned something new that I don't know that I was aware of at the time, about what happened with me in the experience.

Well, that's interesting, but it's not what I asked about. I want to know if your experience of what you learned is different.

Ben: No, there's no difference.

There's no difference whatsoever? You have to actually stop and think about it. You can't just say, "Oh, it's the same." That's like saying, "I tried to learn to fly, but I couldn't get out to the plane, so it doesn't work." . . .

Ben: Well, it's funny you mentioned flying, because what I remembered was learning the feel of landing on water — the feel of that contact with the water. When I ran it backwards, I moved out of the feeling of it, and to get the airplane to move backwards I had to view it from a distance. And that added a new dimension to the learning of the touching on the water.

It gave you another perspective. Now do you know anything more about landing a plane than you did before? Ben: Yeah.

What else don't you know? Yet? That's quite a lot to get from just running a movie backwards. A lot of people rerun movies forward as a way of learning from experience, but not many run them backward. How about the rest of you. Is your experience the same?

Sally: No. The details changed. What I pay attention to changed. There's a sequence of things ordered differently.

The sequence is ordered differently. Now, is what you learned different?

Sally: Yes.

How is it different? Do you know something that you didn't know before? Or could you do something different now?

Sally: The body of knowledge is not different. What I learned isn't different, but how I feel about it, and how I look at it, is different.

Would that influence your behavior?

Sally: Yes.

Several of you got quite a lot out of just taking a minute to run an experience backwards. How much would you learn if you ran all your experiences backwards? You see, Sally is absolutely right. Running a movie backwards changes the sequence of experience. Think of two experiences: 1) being able to do something, and 2) being unable to do the same thing, First sequence them 1–2, first, you can, and then can't, do something. . . . Now sequence them 2–1, first you can't, and then can, do something. . . . Those are pretty different, aren't they?

The experiences in your life happened to you in a certain order. Most of that sequence wasn't planned; it just happened. A lot of your understanding is based on that somewhat random sequence, Since you have only one sequence, you have only one set of understandings, and that will limit you. If the same events had happened to you in a different order, your understandings would be very different, and you would respond very differently.

You have a whole personal history that's the wealth that you're going to use to go into the future. How you use it will determine what it will produce. If you only have one way of using it, you'll be very limited. There will be a lot of things you won't notice, a lot of places you never go, and a lot of ideas you simply won't have.