Letter #40: Cognitive Dissonance is a Learning Strategy
It’s an upside down world for us humans too!
Dear Friend
Whoops, missed a week, sorry! You may recall me saying back in the summer that I was doing a training session online for the spiritual-minded community that I’ve been a part of for a few years. Well, they wanted me to do a follow-up session, to check in with each other to see how they have all been getting on actually applying what they learned and practised in our three sessions together.
I’m happy to report that their feedback tells me that they have benefitted greatly in various different ways, often in completely unanticipated ways.
But it made me super busy preparing for this session, and that’s the main reason I missed our Letter last week.
Okay, back on track.
Some (not so) random thoughts, related to our journey of self-empowerment and transformation of our life…
#1 We cannot make any enduring positive changes to our life without, first, changing our mindset. As I like rhymes in my teaching work, I call it ‘a mindset reset’.
The full process or journey of making real change in our life has four steps, which are predicated on the purpose for making such transformational change being twofold:
to make our own life better - healthier, happier, more productive, more creative, more harmonious, more connected, more meaningful
to contribute proactively to making the whole world a better world, including of course the whole of humankind.
I have said before that if you only try doing one or the other, then minimal gains, if any, will be made. We could say that neither “I’m alright Jack” nor being a 'people pleaser’ will work because we are doing one at the expense of the other. We have to do both at the same time.
However, the good news is that if we are doing things the right way, then by simply choosing to do one of them we will automatically find we are actually doing both of them at the same time. This is because the laws of nature tell us that we are all interconnected.
All our suffering, problems, pains, conflicts, hurt arise because our psyche thinks we are separate beings in this world, and that’s a gigantic wrong understanding that all spiritual seekers have to correct for themselves, consciously so. This is why we need a mindset reset, to consciously override this subconscious program that constantly whirs away below the radar of our consciousness, causing so many other misunderstandings, leading to much division, conflict and stress.
Spiritual self-growth and personal development must be built on correcting this dreadful misunderstanding. That’s why I’ve created A Spiritual Revolution, as the journey to get one on their way with a sound solid foundation in place that can weather all challenges and storms.
Oh, the four stages…
change your mindset
change your thinking and perspective
change your world
change the world
And that, ladies and gentlemen, gives lie to the disempowering nonsense we frequently hear that we are just one small person, we cannot change anything. Bullshit, to use my best French language. It’s ONLY individual human beings who can change the world, but ONLY if they are changing themselves at the same time.
#2 I have mentioned ‘cognitive dissonance’ in a recent Letter, and said I would get back to it. This term has recently started to gain traction in our media world, and that can only be a really good thing.
Its practical meaning in our times right now is something akin to, consciously receiving the thought that all ‘conspiracy theories’ might possibly be actual truths, and that all those pesky ‘conspiracy theorists’ who were so derided for so long might actually have been right all along.
Cognitive dissonance is when our conscious mind is given cause to question the validity of all our prior and existing understandings about our world, formed from our belief systems which are held in the long-term memory bank of our subconscious mind and psyche.
Cognitive dissonance is the intersection between our conscious and subconscious minds, which, for a brief second or two, are in conflict with each other. We can go (react in) one of either two ways: fall instantly back into our subconscious mind’s prior understanding and deny the new information, or boldly - and consciously - explore the new information to see if we should adjust or completely overturn previous understandings, knowledge, facts which we held to be true.
This, in fact—at least for adult brains—is what ‘learning’ is. But, the reality that I have observed as an educator and traveller (who has therefore met and got to know thousands of human beings), is that adults subconsciously think learning is done at schools, is for children, that it’s boring, and once we leave school no more such learning need be done. The ‘culture of certainty’ that we see in our world today is an outcome of this ‘thinking’.
The sad irony is that school ‘learning’ was not true learning, merely memorisation of knowledge (or ideology posing as knowledge).
So, we’re not even stopping learning, as we didn’t even get properly started with it.
And this is why we have so many stuck people, decaying psychologically and therefore emotionally and therefore physically, instead of evolving and growing. It’s not surprising; the ‘learning’ experience in schools for most was boring at best and harmful at worst.
And, it is being said, with this new information coming our way being too threatening to our ‘comfort zone’ (eg politicians may be criminals running a criminal enterprise; science may be corrupted; our foods may be poisoning us; we don’t really know who we are; we are a thousand times more powerful than we ever dreamt about), one returns to the refuge of their subconscious mind and the belief systems which it is populated by.
‘Truth is stranger than fiction, and drugs are everywhere’, sang the Rolling Stones back in the 1980s.
It is regression back into the familiar, the already-known. And the reason this is an enticing choice to make is precisely because we were disempowered during our schooling from not learning how to learn or communicate or do research or think critically etc etc. Thus we lack ability in these crucial human skills, and our subconscious mind rebels, trying to protect us from looking stupid.
However, cognitive dissonance is a brilliant tool for those who seek to evolve, grow, and who think that constantly improving oneself is an integral part of the human experience and the reason for living. Furthermore, the more understanding we gain in life the more liberated we feel in our life.
When I was teaching my teacher students in the university, in my last teaching position, I deliberately created regular cognitive dissonance situations - specifically as a strategy for learning how to challenge one’s own beliefs. And therefore to advance one’s knowledge, understandings and, most importantly, to develop their ability for reflective thinking and skilled learning.
Without doing this we remain prisoners to our past—shaped by all our beliefs which we take to be truths—and, even worse, it turns out that all these beliefs which are stored in our ‘long-term memory’ are not even ours, but rather the ones that our society and culture embedded in us, primarily through our schooling and then in our media (text books for adults).
So, whenever information comes your way that is, often, directly opposite to your current understanding, don’t run from it, look into it! Give it your conscious attention, reflect upon it, ask questions of it. Ask friends, ask other people who might be able to help you explore.
If it’s a conversation with somebody, don’t disagree with them, question them, ask them to tell you more, and how and why this is their perspective.
Learn to question your own answers to things, challenge yourself. You may well find that your existing understanding is true, and that’s great because now it’s YOUR understanding, you have verified it for yourself. But often you will have cause to completely change your understanding.
This is central to one’s transformation.
#3 I just want to return briefly to food, diet and nutrition. We covered this topic a lot in the first few Letters.
There is so much information out there on what constitutes a good healthy diet, we are just saturated with it. It’s so easy to get confused and despondent. It’s a timely topic for me because I’ve recently become aware of the outstanding work the brother and sister team of Cally and Casey Means, from the USA, are doing. I hope they stay alive.
They are now advisors to RFK (Bobby Kennedy) who is now aligned with Trump in the American political scene. Their new slogan is ‘Make America Healthy Again’. I can’t think of a more important thing to campaign on.
Bobby has long investigated the situation of food and medicines, and knows well how toxic they are to our physical and mental health, and to the environment. The sister throws out stats which are truly shocking, and which, summed up, are telling us that Americans are destroying themselves through their food and medical systems. That will be true of any country following the diet of the US, including my own home country of Britain. My diet for health, happiness and harmony is this:
Eat whole foods, get corporate-made foods out of your life.
Corporate foods include junk foods (the clue to their value is in their name!), processed foods, and refined sugars, oils, salt and flour. Whole foods are what grow in nature and have been untampered with by food companies.
If you do just this one thing you will transform your physical health, and a healthy body leads to a happy mind and heart.
Your body will find its natural weight by shedding so many stored toxins and undigested foods. It will be so thankful to you, and I feel that for anybody who truly wants to transform their lives, this is an excellent starting point, and you very quickly get to notice benefits. And rewards are so important as it’s not easy to change ingrained habits, even when they are harmful to us. Check out how difficult it is to drop our addictions!
But there is so much more to be done, once you’ve made that important start.
If you eat eggs, dairy, meat, are these foods coming from animals that lived a free life or who spend their life in animal concentration camps?
Are you washing your vegetables and fruits to get surface chemicals and pesticides, herbicides, fungicides off? Our corporate system sprays even the good foods with all their toxic substances. We soak our produce in sodium bicarbonate and water for several minutes before eating or cooking. This is super cheap to buy, and I think perhaps the best thing to use to at least remove the toxins from the surface.
Are you aware of how much refined sugar you are eating? The average American eats one kilogram of it every week of their lives, and one of Calley Means’ stats is that 50% of American adults are diabetic or have pre-diabetes. It was almost zero when I was a boy, just two generations ago.
My average? Probably a few teaspoons worth which I assume is an ingredient in the locally baked bread that I buy. That means somebody else is on two kilos a week!!
Get superfoods and herbs into your life, avoid the corporate-made supplements - which have dubious benefits, and some professionals say they are not good for us; I don’t know for sure, but I DO know that herbs and superfoods are great and just as easy to get as these supplements.
Their supplements are the same as their medicines: taking one good bit out of the original, naturally-grown product and adding who knows what. Now what nature provides as a whole cannot do its holistic work on you. And nature provided it as a whole for a very good reason!
Herbs and superfoods are the whole food in small form, making them easy to consume, yet carrying a powerful punch of good health for our bodies and minds. You get a whole load of micro-nutrients such as minerals and vitamins that your body needs to function properly.
Some of my personal favourites over the years have been cold-pressed coconut and sesame oils, maca powder, amalaki (Indian gooseberry), triphala, moringa, ashwaganda, milk thistle, raw local honey, bee pollen, royal jelly. We also make green juices using leaves and plants from our garden. There are so many others.
Make them a regular intake in your life!
They act as promoters of your immune system, enabling it to do its work more efficiently, leaving you with more vitality, clarity and energy.
~~~~~~~
My special ebooklet coming your way
That’s this week’s Letter for you, with one more thing to tell you about.
I’ve been working feverishly on writing and creating my ‘ebooklet’ called A Spiritual Revolution The Ebooklet: The Why, the What, the How. I call it an ‘ebooklet’ because it’s not long! Its purpose is to give interested seekers of a better life the lowdown on why the whole human world needs to get A Spiritual Revolution into their life, what it will do for their own life, and how to get started almost straight away.
It will be the official first stage of six stages to my venture and mission for people all over the world to systematically incorporate A Spiritual Revolution into their lives, a framework and 5-step journey to brilliantly transforming one’s life, health and destiny.
A reminder: A Spiritual Revolution brings Health Harmony and Happiness to the individual’s life, and contributes directly to the Healing of Humankind (the 5Hs).
Doing steps #1-4 will be more than enough to inspire and empower participants to radically upgrade, improve and revitalise their life, and they will be helping the planet too, and she will be most happy about that. If you get on board you will have completed the four steps by some time in February.
The final two steps will put you firmly into the stars, but with grounded feet…! It will be perfect for those who are educators, parents, leaders, world helpers and so on because everything you learn with me you will then be able to bring to, and empower, others in the same manner.
The premise of this transformational education is that it must be exciting, rewarding, engaging, empowering and liberating, and therein lies an important point for me to impress upon you, my loyal subscriber! Not to make you do anything,, but just to make sure you don’t not do something good out of not realising you had such a choice.
It’s this…
Reading stuff, watching videos, doing research, listening to gurus and life coaches, and all this kind of thing, are all excellent ways to improve our lives, but we do them alone. We depend upon being accountable to ourselves to do this work, and we are focused mostly on gathering knowledge.
However, nothing can be more useful or important to our wellbeing, evolution and self-growth than becoming a skilled learner and communicator.
With a world saturated with information, the important thing is discerning the good information from the bad, the true from the untrue, and to decide who is charlatan and who is well-intentioned.
And you can’t practise and master true learning skills unless you are practising and mastering your communication skills; and you can’t do this unless you are, erm, communicating! And that needs a group of you so that you can communicate and work together.
But perhaps most important of all… as social animals the most important skill we need to form strong healthy relationships at work, home and in play is good communication skills.
Schools not only fail to develop our learning and communication skills, they suppress us from doing this.
My whole venture I’m building is to bring my university teaching out into the online world to massively increase my reach to heal humankind through the delivery of self-empowering, skills-focused, heart-centred education.
That means when you learn with me you are developing crucial skills, acquiring essential self-knowledge and greatly boosting your self-confidence and self-belief. This is a powerful synergy driving your self-empowerment!
It will give you the full toolkit to integrate self-development and spiritual growth as a natural part of your life forevermore.
Then you go back out into the world as a confident communicator, excellent listener, self-aware observer, action researcher, critical thinker, and so much more, which will lead you to accruing multiple benefits in your life.
It comes back to the slogan I introduced to you right at the start of this year of Letters:
Unblock your Mind >> Unlock your Heart >> Unleash your Spirit!
It is impossible to not do this in my classroom, whether in-person or online. Well, a comatose person may struggle!
Furthermore, you are filled with enthusiasm, purpose, passion and self-belief to grab hold of your life and proactively live your life whichever way you want to live it. Now you are able to draw upon and cultivate that huge reservoir of goodness, inner beauty and whole array of talents that your society and schooling suppressed from you.
There will be a two-session workshop, and this leads into a six-session Foundation Course. I will be holding the first round of workshops in the twilight of this year, 2024, in time for me to offer the first Foundation Course/s to start in January 2025.
All will be live online, with me as your navigator and facilitator. You will find yourself on a journey of self-inquiry and guided discovery. It’s nothing like what you will recall of the ‘learning’ experience in your school days.
When the ebooklet is complete (very soon) I will send it to you as a separate, stand-alone email with the word ‘ebooklet’ in the subject line. And then, if it inspires you, enroll and become part of my first ‘official’ group of pioneering spiritual revolutionaries who are going to transform our world as well as themselves!
All the best
Philip
