Overcoming Conditioned Pattern, Repetition and Habit

Introduction

This page explores the nature of psychological
conditioning (or effortful desire) and its dependence
on pattern, and hence repetitive, behaviours.

The page comprises a number of relatively short, contiguous articles which examine, from various perspectives, the results of and the processes involved in patterning and hence conditioning (by repetition) the nervous system and creating habitual psychological and physical behaviours.
Given a fundamental understanding of these processes, an exploration of the possibility of cessation of unnecessary patterns of behaviour (i.e. those arising in arbitrary, cultural conditioning, political and similar indoctrination, transient peer group pressure, socially engineered 'education', etc.) then takes place, partially in tandem as a set of awareness exercises.

Ultimately, the generation of both unconditional interrupt (spontaneous physical negation by direct observation and action), and conditional interrupt (deliberate - based on pattern disruption techniques), depends upon 'doing' which is fostered by investigated by means of observation in the consciousness expansion exercises and interrupt techniques that create doing by negation.

The pattern interruptions presented in the exercises here are designed to be carried out kinesthetically - i.e. by the physical body in direct self awareness - and not as mere word manipulations.
Mere superficial reading, discussion or thinking about pattern or pattern interrupt as an intellectual behaviour merely perpetuates pattern continuity in the form of word: the description is not the described.
Body will interrupt destructive pattern - if allowed the opportunity to observe it directly (kinesthetically) - and intervene directly.

The Basic Nature of Conditioning

You only need to learn one or two fundamental things with regard to 'conditioning' (which lies at the root of abberant behaviour) and then the rest is down to your ingenuity in devising means of altering that conditioning - mainly by interruption, but sometimes by superseding - and implementing them.

An interrupt will normally work on it's own, (a proper interrupt will temporarily break the continuity of the behavioural loops that comprise an individual's' psychological conditioning or habit). Once the shallow levels of verbally driven continuity become derailed then the underlying default - and benevolent/harmonious/wholistic biological - conditioning will kick in, PROVIDED the circumstances or associations that form part of the original condition (ie the anchors in NLP speak) are also addressed.

The fundamentals are:
1) conditioning exists in pattern and is created by pattern
2) pattern can only exist in (and take hold by) repetition

hduiejgdfkhj = a random sequence
hduiejgdfkhj hduiejgdfkhj hduiejgdfkhj = a pattern
hduiejgdfkhj uk hduiejgdfkhj uk hduiejgdfkhj uk = a pattern

Understand the importance of the previous six lines.
If you are serious in overcoming the limitations of habitual and patterned behaviour - breaking habit either in yourself (the place to start) or others - you must understand the indented lines above in depth.
Read them over several times - consciously using repetition to your advantage rather than being its unconscious slave; play with them until you thoroughly understand that:

pattern depends upon repetition
pattern depends upon repetition
pattern depends upon repetition
pattern depends upon repetition

and cannot exist without it.
If you learn only one thing from this page, then learn that.

Understand how it works in individuals, in sense - sight, hearing, speaking, thinking - in groups and organisations, in physical behaviour, in number and in form. Repetition creates habit by patterning the form upon which on/in it repeats. Break pattern and you break habit - break any habit since habit is repeating behaviour. Repetition of pattern, in whatever mode, comprises vibration.

Patterns exist as periodic oscillations, sometimes simple, sometimes complex - but even the most complex of oscillations can be broken into simple component parts (for the mathematically minded consider this as Fourier analysis). Patterns do not exist only in mere 'words' and sounds, but in all manner of things - geometric pattern, colour, physical form, physical movements, rocks and crystals, architecture, science, mathematics, taste, texture, visual image, fluid flow, etc, etc. Some are natural in that they occur spontaneously in Nature, some, the culturally grown varieties, are not & certain species of the latter actually endanger the well-being of all life forms on this planet.

That's all you need to know to begin with - the rest falls in place as you apply it.

Once you become aware of the fundamentals - by daily/moment to moment observation, not by mere intellectual discussion and theorisation - then you should be able to detect patterns in most things & in many cases deal with them as necessary 'on the wing'.
Alternatively, you may use prescribed (usually tried and tested) 'technique' as devised by others. The first method is best in terms of actual in depth understanding; as for the second method, well note that somewhere, sometime, somebody devised that technique originally and perhaps you can improve on such general methods by devising some to suit your own particular circumstances.

Patterning Techniques 1: Pavlov and Classical Conditioning by Repetition & Association

In 1879, Pavlov worked on the physiology of digestion, which culminated in his book, "The Work Of The Digestive Glands."

He investigated the mechanisms involved in the secretion of various digestive glands. During the course of his work, Pavlov noticed that salivation could be induced by the sight of food, or other stimuli that normally preceded feeding OR in the association of some other stimulus with the feeding process. This led him to the discovery of the ‘Conditional Reflex’, now regarded as a fundamental aspect of learning and classical conditioning..

In a typical experiment, Pavlov showed that if the presentation of food to a dog was repeatedly accompanied by the sound of a bell, then the dog would come to respond to the bell as if it were food whether the food was presented or not. In other words, a non-natural response could be created by repetition and association of artificial stimulus AND that the effect of the artificial stimulus persisted even when natural stimulus was removed.
Pavlov measured the salivary response to paired presentations of food and bell and then measured salivation in response to presentation of the bell alone. He regarded salivation to the food as an "Unconditional Response," (not strictly true - it is the conditioned unconscious/instinctive behaviour of the biological system) and the subsequent salivation to the bell alone as a "Conditional Response," because it is ‘conditional’ upon prior pairing between food and bell.
He suggested that the cells of the ‘Central-Nervous-System’ changed structurally and chemically during conditioning, (And this notion is not too far removed from the modern view).

Pavlov’s major work translated into English as; "Conditioned Reflexes: An Investigation Of The Physiological Activity Of The Cerebral Cortex" (1927)

In his original experiments, Pavlov confined a hungry dog in a harness and presented small portions of food at regular intervals. When he signalled the delivery of food by ringing a bell, the behaviour of the dog towards the stimulus, (the bell), gradually changed. The animal began by orientating to the bell, licking its lips and salivating. When Pavlov recorded the salivation by placing a small tube in the salivary duct and collecting the saliva, he found that the amount of the saliva collected increased as the animal experienced more pairings between the sound of the bell, and food presentation.

[Note the patterning by presence of REPETITION of stimulus and pairing of stimulus in a parallel pattern. Without repetition, the conditioning did not occur.]

Perception, Patterning and Negation

'The question 'How does a thing become conscious?'
could be put more advantageously thus:
'How does a thing become pre-conscious?'
And the answer would be:
'By coming into connection
with the verbal images that correspond to it'.
[Freud: 'The Ego and the Id']

The manner in which we speak (and think - when thinking in words) actually vibronically conditions the structure of our nervous systems and physical forms and, accordingly, our perception of the world. It is not 'merely' a psychological process but rather a physical one in which the repetitive patterned sounds (or repeating electro-chemical sound images acting in the structure of the neuronic system in the case of verbalised thinking) actually condition the structure of that system.
The word-form sound patterns we hear in speech (and which manifest internally, in imaging in the hearing sense, during verbalised thinking or internal dialogue) comprise a series of systematic complex grunts which were associated in our nervous systems, by repetition (usually by our parents and siblings), to objective sensory experience in us as young children. We reinforced this by imitation - itself a form of repetition.

All this ocurred when we learned to speak - first in 'noun' (object), then adjective/noun, then verb, adverb and preposition/article/connjunction etc. as we became practiced in the rules of language.
Children typically utter a first word at around ten months. At age one they have a 'vocabulary' (largely imitative) of four or so words, twentyish words at eighteen months and at age two something like two to three hundred. Somewhere between the ages of one and two years, the child actually 'understands', unconsciously but clearly, that language is a symbol system referring and describing the world around, and becomes a 'member' of the conceptual world associated with the particular language system.

What you observe with your sensory apparatus is not the 'actual' or 'out there', but a reality filtered by the conditioning of your nervous system. It is filtered according to the conceptual base of your first learned language. Cultural similarities in the content of conditioning - culture in this context meaning the broad swathe of human activities - biological, behavioural and especially linguistic, will give rise to similar, or consensus, shared realities. The greater the similarity and intensity of conditioning, the greater the consensus.

Our collective conditioned patterns - and their interaction with other patterned forms in the actuality of the unknowable, undifferentiated 'what is' - give rise to our nervous systems' view of the world, our differentiated reality. So long as we persist in those patterns, so long will that view persist.

Shifting our cultural and linguistic patterns - the actual conditioning sounds - will shift our view of the world, which owing to the arrival of acrophonic alphabets, the printed word, standardised dictionaries, mass production, the workings of electronic mass media, the spread of dominant of Western culture, the electronic computer and concordant languages - rapidly converges on a global scale.

When one is not thinking clearly
objectively
rationally
be aware of that
and change it
break it.
That is transformation.
[Krishnamurti]

The problems of the individual, and by extension humanity, arise in what is commonly referred to as 'psychological conditioning' (but see above with regard to structural patterning of the nervous system) - the movement of human thinking processes - which occur primarily in language and visually based consciousness systems in the form of words and words describing fleeting pictures (although in the ultimate analysis 'psychological' and 'biological' conditioning merge as protoplasmic, biological, adaptive 'material' form responds to long term persistent behaviour). As the present dominant species on this planet, the behaviour of humankind - which comprise the gross fixated patterned behaviours of individuals - will significantly affect the short-term circumstances of all other life forms that share the planetary ecosphere (but the system is reciprocal).

Is it possible, in seeing the potential danger of many of these unconscious conditioned states - greed, desire, guilt, fear, jealousy, stupidities and indoctrinations of various kinds, etc. - that the individual can act intelligently from moment to moment in negating them as they arise?

Since 'I' understand directly that excessive heat - in the form of say a hot stove or a pan - can damage my body I immediately withdraw my hand should it come in contact with any such hot object. This (intense) process occurs spontaneously, without any verbalised thinking, in any normally functional human being. Furthermore, apart from the immediate reaction to any direct contact that might occur, I acquire, providing I'm not stupid, an element of (useful) psychological conditioning exist that keeps me wary of hot objects - I have, either by experience or education/instruction by others, a learned caution that such things are dangerous to me and, without any internal debate, repetitive looping in thinking processes or interminable weighing of pros and cons, I keep clear of them.

In this manner, the body 'conditions' the psyche directly - and very few repetitions of intense pain/learning about hot objects are required. Likewise, I don't walk in directly in front of fast moving buses, stand at the edge of high precipices, go out in freezing weather without clothes or swallow lethal poisons; all without effort.

If we can observe the dangers of our psychological conditioning that arises through unnecessary acculturation and unconscious repetition - even in a relatively superficial way - and become aware of it's processes and indications of its presence, can we naturally act and negate, instantly and effortlessly, it in the same manner as we do in not grasping the hot pan?

Can the intelligent and earnest student learn how to do this? Can this learning ultimately become available to anyone in the form of a structured 'education' which liberates - in intelligently avoiding damaging pattern rather than constraining in repetition?

Expanded awareness, such as proposed on this page, will act such that any potentially injurious psychological patterns become seen for what they are - immediately, from moment to moment. In the seeing arises the deep intelligence of the body as a reciprocal movement of reaching for consciousness expansion, and this will have done with any danger to its well-being instantaneously, effortlessly, as in moving away from the hot stove.

Patterning Techniques 2: Repetition Pattern Recognition and Sales

Use Repetition to Increase Your Sales
[by Lisa Lake http://MyAdBlaster.com]

Repetition will increase your sales.
Repetition will increase your sales.
Repetition will increase your sales.
Have I made my point?
Probably.
You certainly know what this article is about, don't you.
Now let me tell you a little story:

Once upon a time there was a beautiful girl named Trixy. Trixy was the most beautiful girl in the kingdom. She was so beautiful that Prince John fell madly in love with her beautiful face. But Trixy, who was incredibly beautiful, thought she was too beautiful even for Prince John. So Trixy decided to join a rock band and be a backup dancer.
The End.

Without looking back at the story, can you recall what the prince's name was?
Maybe you can and maybe you can't.
But, without looking back at the story, can you tell me what was so special about Trixy?
You most definitely can. And why can you remember what was so special about Trixy?
Because I repeated it about six times!

This same principle can be applied to your marketing to help people remember your message.
Your advertising should definitely not use as much repetition as my story did.
However, you do need to figure out what is the most important thing to communicate to your potential customers hammer that point home. If you are having a sale, you need to emphasize that you are having a sale...

Don't be afraid that people will find your advertisement annoying. Many people only listen to advertisements with half an ear. Advertising becomes like subliminal messaging. It is always going on in the background, even if no one is paying rapt attention to it. We can all recite certain logos and jingles, even though most of us don't make an effort to memorize them. [See Commentary below.]

Don't just repeat yourself in your ad. When you find your target market, advertise where you think people will hear it and do it over and over again. There is a local jeweller who advertises constantly on every radio station I listen to. I always know when they are having a sale and what will be on sale. I will also remember their exact address until my dying day...
http://www.logo-design-logo-design.com/logos-articles/repetition.htm [Italics are mine.]

Commentary:
The effects of repetition on the public have of course been researched. The principal findings, with respect to advertising are as follows - and for the word 'advertising' below you can substitute: 'education', 'conditioning', 'propaganda', 'sound bite':

a. Repetition conditions the credibility to your claims in the subject (whether those claims are credible or not) and, if done properly, should create a favourable attitude in the subject. The more exposure a person has, the more favourable his reaction to it becomes: brand recognition sets in. (but a limit to the number of repetitions exists).

b. Sequencing and frequency of advertising influence the degree and duration of recall. Memory depends upon the cumulative effect of intensity of individual applications of stimulus and number of repetitions. (similar to weight training - weight x number of repetitions = muscle building effect).

c. Repeat advertising increases the chances the reader/listener/viewer will get exposed to it. This is fairly obvious, but there is more; to hit about 90% of the audience in a given 'channel' (TV station, publication, etc.) a repeat of eight times is needed (assuming 30 per cent of audience noticed it when it first appeared).

d. Interrupting ad campaigns brings about decline in the recall; persistence is important. When a message is no longer reinforced, people forget & the pattern is broken.

Not only will patterned repetition 'increase your sales', but it will likewise burn ANY repeated image - sales, political, religious, propaganda, corporate, cliché, poem, word or other symbol - into the structure of your consciousness. Sufficient repetition will modify consciousness irrespective of whether the image happens to have any basis in fact or not, hence it is equally as possible to have memory that 'fairies are real' as it is to have memory of 'two plus two equals four,' even though one has basis in fact and the other is nonsense.

Once such images become entrenched and they do so in the manner of habit - they will tend to repeat themselves when any associative stimulus occurs, much in the manner of Pavlov's dogs. Moreover, and this is important, the stimulus does not have to arise in an external sensory source, an internally associated image (e.g. word) is sufficient to energise the implanted conditioning and give rise to streams of associatively linked 'internal dialogue' such that one eventually conditions oneself by internal repetition.

Images implanted into consciousness become implicit in the functioning of that consciousness; the nervous system alters materially to absorb them and they become part of it. One needs to be careful what one allows in there - and one must realise that as children we (every human being) had no awareness of this & hence no choice but to accept the extant culture as did our contemporaries, our parents, and our parents parents before them. In this manner, cultural consciousness and continuity persists in local and planetary form: breaking the habit processes becomes possible once the habits and means of implantation become revealed.

Note the multiple order temporal repetition in:

'Don't just repeat yourself IN your ad.
When you find your target market,
advertise where you think people will
hear it and do it OVER AND OVER again.'

In other words the simple short term repeating pattern thus:
sptshigsptshigsptshig...
becomes the compound pattern thus:
sptshigsptshigsptshig-----sptshigsptshigsptshig-----sptshigsptshigsptshig-----sptshigsptshigsptshig-----(etc.)
with repetitions taking place in groups AND over extended time periods (another name for this is mantric oscillation or mantric vibration: plotted on an oscilloscope the constant repetition of any given word set wll appear as a periodic wave form). As an exercise, see if you can notice any patterns around you that do this - especially those that use exact pattern repetition in regular time periods... and then consider what effect they might be having on you.

Exercise Athene: Preliminary Observation of Simplex Conditioning

As individuals we were indoctrinated into our conditioning by the dominant culture in which we got born into, (as our parents/teachers/anyone else we meet before us were - ad infinitum), so in a way 'our' conditioning 'originates' back in the mists of time.

Each of us came into this world with an essentially 'blank slate' as mind/memory and, since we had no means of resistance or comparison, we innocently accepted everything the extant culture fed to us irrespective of its practicality, relevance or otherwise.
Our minds (the macroscopic structure of our nervous systems) were imprinted and deeply conditioned into our culture which, once implanted, exists implicitly and continuously in our conceptual frames.

Having said that, the continuity of that conditioning depends upon our continuing participation and self-energisation of it - and individual responsibility certainly lies here. If as individuals we can interrupt the conditioning, which means de-energisation of our (mainly unconscious) repetitive behaviours, then they transform.

The first step in this lies in observation. Observation is direct learning that brings these unconscious behaviours into awareness; only the individual can do this - but fortunately, help is at hand in the behaviour of other individuals, which is a bit easier to observe.

To put this into practice, for at least the next week attempt to be aware of the patterned behaviours in yourself and others and of patterns that surround you. In particular, and since as discussed in depth elsewhere on this page, repetition lies at the root of patterning so try to be aware of the REPETITION that goes on in and around you thus:

- in speech, the use of words, tonalities and clichés
- mannerism
- dress
- diet
- repeated visual patterns
- time based behaviour (observing doings of self/others at set times)
- repeated sound patterns
- spatial behaviours (doings at set places)
- precision repeated physical shapes (mass produced objects)
- linear sequences of events (how one thing follows another in repeated sequence)
- how certain behaviours bring certain reactions and sequential responses
- if you can, become aware of how your (verbalised) thinking repeatedly kicks in in the same pattern to certain stimuli

It's often easier to see much of the (physical behaviours) in others - start with them if you wish, but be sure to get around to observing yourself: the real learning by observation kicks in with the awakening of self awareness. try not to criticise, comment (indeed words - spoken or thought - will only get in the way and perpetuae the repetitions) or attempt to change any of these behaviours, just become aware of them that's all.

This is a basic exercise in attention expansion such as to bring normally unconscious (simplex) behaviours into waking awareness. Discussing it and thinking about it doesn't make any difference; the only way you will actually expand your awareness is by doing. You learn by observing, not by thinking or talking, and observing repetition provides a relatively easy initiation.

Pattern Techniques 3: Political Propaganda

"The receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget. Such being the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotyped formulas. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward."

"No matter what an amount of talent employed in the organization of propaganda, it will have no result if due account is not taken of these fundamental principles. Propaganda must be limited to a few simple themes and these must be represented again and again. Here, as in innumerable other cases, perseverance is the first and most important condition of success."

"It is not the purpose of propaganda to create a series of alterations in sentiment with a view to pleasing these blase gentry. Its chief function is to convince the masses, whose slowness of understanding needs to be given time in order that they may absorb information; and only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting an idea on the memory of the crowd."

Commentary
Hard words. Cynical and shrewd words.
These are the words of Adolf Hitler who - whatever you might think of him - was a master of the art of conditioning the minds of his followers, and by extension, the majority of 1930's Germany.
That conditioning caused a world war.
Here, he openly reveals that repetition provides the fundamental pattern conditioning mechanism.

Repetition of pattern creates conditioning, and the greater the persistence and the clearer the pattern the deeper the imprinting.
Can we become aware of this? Can we observe processes such as those outlined above around us in our everyday lives?

Do we see how they condition us and then we actually condition ourselves and others by repetition of words and slogans and how such become part of our consciousness?

Can we be aware of this not just intellectually, but as it occurs around us from moment to moment and NEGATE IT immediately as and when it occurs in our thinking processes, speech and behaviours?

Exercise Orpheus: Expanding Awareness of Word Repetition

This is a simple, but powerful, consciousness expansion exercise that you can carry out at home, in a car bus or train. The essential equipment comprises a multi-stream (at least three) source of continuous audible human language the ideal being a multi-channel radio or television.

The spoken word or song are both effective in this exercise thus:

1. turn on the sound source and tune to an appropriate channel (channel ’A’ say)
2. listen to the speech/song and immediately you hear a repeated word then switch to another channel (channel ‘B’, say)
3. listen again to the speech/song and immediately you hear a repeated word then switch to another channel (channel ‘C’, say)
4. avoid repeating the words you hear repeated (you will not be paying attention if you do); the exercise is to raise your situational awareness and get your body to act directly, not cause the mind to parrot
5. carry on as above, switching to a new channel every time a word repeats

The simplicity of the exercise belies its effectiveness. You will certainly miss quite a few of the repeats in the early stages (and strangely enough realise you’ve missed them) but don’t let that bother you.

Don't go back, the moment has gone so don't bother trying to re-evoke it in memory: pay attention and press ahead until the next repeat and switch. You will observe, by doing, that your sensitivity to repeating words and word patterns progressively, and universally, improves with practice and that your 'unconscious' mind acts far more rapidly than mere verbalising.

Again, you don’t deliberately try to change anything with this (except radio channel!), it is a consciousness expansion exercise which heightens your awareness - and in time that heightened awareness will act directly. You will certainly, and very rapidly, notice the repetitive nature of the linguistic patterning that bombards your consciousness from the mass media everyday (especially in the form of emotionally and logically malformed song-pattern repetitions). That alertness, once awakened, will extend far beyond mere mass-media patterning into day to day life.

To be fully effective, you need to do this for several sessions of preferablty not less than 20 minutes duration. Be sure not to repeat the words you observe repeating, rather actually physically CHANGE CHANNEL (remote control is OK, probably best) and then listen attentively for the next repeat.
You will find that your body can act far more rapidly in spontaneously identifying and responding to patterened (sonic in this case) vibration than the (second-hand, inattentive) behaviour of 'mind' in registering/repeating internally of observed words, so don't repeat them!

The purpose of all this is to increase attention - not to get entrained with the language content of any particular channel (which is in fact an act of inattention with regard to immediate surroundings).

This exercise can be performed alone (probably best not doing it if your partner is watching TV!), or it can be played as a very entertaining (and cooperative) game with two or more participants.
If you don't have steering wheel radio controls, best not do this in a moving vehicle alone; although the exercise actually increases all round alertness, fiddling around trying to switch radio channels may distract you from driving.

Pattern Techniques 4: Assertiveness Conditioning

Broken Record
One of the fundamental assertion techniques for getting your own way/self programming/self-hypnosis by deploying patterned repetition. (Oh yes, that's the reason that person kept repeating those words.)

'Broken record' involves just that - emulating a record that has got stuck in a groove and goes around and around repeating the same thing irrespective of any objections or queries about what, how or why. It epitomises simple patterned conditioning of the mind of self and any others who might come within hearing range. The ‘assertion trainers’ recommend use of the technique when:

a) handling ‘conflict’ situations
b) saying no
c) clarifying questions
d) correcting superiors/those in authority
e) when expressing feeling or opinion
and
f) in situations where (ironically) the ‘other person’ isn’t listening

In using this technique, they advise the user to speak as a propagandist, i.e.

1) identify the point you want to make
2) make a short, clear statement of it (= a slogan)
3) stick to the point with no wavering, no explanation, variation or discussion
and
4) persistently repeat it, over and over again, ignoring any arguments, statements, questions or evidence to the contrarary until you wear down and condition your ’audience’ (and your self...)
5) use monotony such as to obtain near perfect repetition of the message
[Now just page back and re-read the Hitler quotes...]

Examples:
* ’I’m not going back to your house’
* ‘Your price is excessive: reduce it’
* ‘Smith has a unicorn hidden at the bottom of his garden’
* ‘Your president is not a crook’
* 'Bullcorp does not pollute the atmosphere'

The supposed power of 'broken record' style lies in is its infuriating uniformity — a uniformity that eventually convinces even the most intransigent opponent (but note, owing to the ‘self-conditioning’ involved in the heavy repetition, it implicitly carries the seeds of self-delusion if the chosen slogan does not relate to reality).

It is also effective over time in that it supposedly develops the ’assertiveness’ of the user over time. Additionally, if used continuously in relationship with another person it signals to the other that what the user says is not likely to shift irrespective of counter arguments. Both the previous statements are nominally accurate in that repetition fixates and hardens attitudes (‘attitudes’ actually comprising heavily fixated patterning of neuronic structure).

The reality of the effectiveness of the technique actually lies, as the propagandists and advertisers have discovered, in progressively conditioning the nervous system by repetition.

The broken record technique is very often used by politicians, corporate executives and officials, in 'debate', and in individual and series' of speeches and interviews, wherein they will attempt to repeat a favourable (simplified = generalised & thus information deleting and misleading) slogan - nowadays known as a 'sound bite' - over and over such as to imprint the consciousness of listeners with misleading concepts.

Statements of 'Rights'
The assertiveness trainers make a big issue of the concept of ‘rights’, the concepts probably arising in the US cultural background of ‘Bill of Rights’, civil rights movement and women’s liberation. Typical rights statements, which the trainees are encouraged to repeat and hence implant (thus fixing ’attitudes’ again), are as follows:

I have the right to state my wants and set my own priorities.
I have the right to defend myself.
I have the right to behave independently.
I have the right to express my feelings.
I have the right to a fair reward for my work.
I have the right to be treated with respect as an equal human being.
I have the right to decline responsibility for other’s problems.
I have the right to express my own opinions and values.
I have the right to say 'yes' and 'no' for myself.
I have the right to change my opinion.
I have the right to reject poor service.
etc, etc, (yawn).

Note the repetitive 'broken record' form associated with each individual statement (within the overall patterning of ‘rights’) of ’I have the right to...’ and further note the gross repetition of the words ’I’ and ’my’ - which are sounds that neuronically pattern ego-image fixation and self-centred ideation. Likewise the recommended use of 'I' form statements as in: 'I don't like it when you______. I want you to______.' (the student fills in the blanks) in much of this assertiveness training.

Saying No
Many assertiveness training courses emphasise that their students should learn and develop "The 'Art' of Saying No" and recommend that this is done by practical repetitive conditioning using the following (typical) techniques:

* Role play.
The student works with a partner or partners in repeatedly and calmly answering 'no' (out loud) to any questions the partner(s) ask, the questions often being prearranged by the course organisers. The idea here is to condition the student - using tens and tens of repetitions - to actually come out with the word 'no' as a semi-automatic response & in doing so overcome any pre-existing inhibition to saying 'no'.

Unfortunately, as with a lot of this training, the questions do not arise from a general 'any type' of question ground but are usually 'I' related - and the recurring 'no' responses serve to fixate ego.

* On The Streets
The student is encouraged to go into various shops, restaurants, bars & public places and ask strangers for various things, examine them and then say: 'No I don't want that' (or some similar mantram) without offering any explanation. If challenged/queried they reply in similar manner - being sure to say 'no' and using 'broken record'. Again the idea is to get used to saying 'no' as a semi-automatic response.

Again, this comprises an adaptation of of the basic 'broken record' technique of monotonous repetition (of 'no') irrespective of question, person or circumstance.

To close, the essence of 'assertiveness' lies in the repetitive fixation of consciousness around the ego. Many people learn to balance this this quite naturally in their childhood environment, but some - those who might have been conditioned to introversion at an early age - do not & are genuine candidates for corrective assertiveness training. Ultimately, excessive 'assertiveness', owing to its fixation and disproportionate emphasis in consciousness on ego, in the form of 'I', 'me', 'mine. and 'my', becomes selfishness and aggression.

Disabling Broken Record

Preamble
Deliberate, as distinct from the more powerful and immediate 'negation' type body interrupts, are dealt with in depth towards the end of this page but as an interim measure, one technique for dealing with the pernicious, conscious 'broken record' behaviour is presented here.

'Broken record' is essentially self-hypnosis into automatic response of incantation of specific formulae in specific circumstances, but it is a self-hypnosis that gets projected, by repetition, into conditioning the nervous system of anyone who happens to come within range of it.

The self-centred world views projected by broken record should not be allowed to pass unchallenged - otherwise, by persistence, they will become predominant. Hence this article here dealing specifically with the problem - a problem which roots in conscious, selfish conditioned behaviour.

Basic Technique
Broken record comprises the repetition of a simple pattern ad nauseum until that pattern becomes entrenched in the neuronic structure of the person using it and, in some circumstances, the people who hear it.

Insofar as pure associative temporal (linearly patterned) conditioning is concerned, it is possible to use ANY pattern - e.g. laghwkvfg laghwkvfg laghwkvfg laghwkvfg , etc. BUT broken record uses specific language patterns that attach themselves to the extant patterns in the body. As said before, these are normally associated with the 'i', 'me', 'my', etc. patterns.

The principle used here in breaking up such patterns is to persistently ADD ON TO THE TAIL of the pattern in various ways such that the pattern of (say) 'laghwkvfg laghwkvfg laghwkvfg' becomes modified into 'laghwkvfguw laghwkvfguw laghwkvfguw' which comprises a NEW PATTERN:

'laghwkvfg' does not equal 'laghwkvfguw'
in the same way that
1234567 does not equal 123456789
Adding to a pattern (or subtracting or reversing etc.) CREATES A NEW PATTERN. The old pattern becomes subsumed in the new and thus gets 'derailed'.

Practical Technique
Three basic practical means of achieving 'morphing' of broken record statements by adding on to tail end are possible viz:

- shifting/reversing sense (grammatical)
- generalising/depotentiating (grammatical)
- interrupt

These are each discussed in turn below with supporting examples.

*Shifting/Reversing Sense
This is achieved by considering the original 'broken record' statement and finding an appropriate word fragment, word, or combination of words that will either shift, reverse or otherwise destroy the meaning of the statement.

First of all, as with all these techniques, you need to LISTEN carefully to the broken record such as to establish the precise word form and meaning. Then you need to invent a word pattern to shift it (walk away and give yourself sufficient time and space to do this if needs be; the effect, once you introduce the shift, will be permanent and worth the consideration). You may phrase the shift in terms of the speaker's viewpoint or alternatively (and better) make it stand as a general consensus view. If you can make it humorous then so much the better.

Once you have the new word element(s) then every time you hear the 'broken record' you must persistently add them to the tail end such as to create a new pattern - make sure the speaker hears it every time. Monotonously imitate their voice and pace delivery to make this really effective.

Doing this will gradually, and repeatedly, re-condition the speaker's consciousness to the new pattern - whilst simultaneously protecting you from the original broken record & conditioning yourself in the new statement. That's why you should choose it carefully & accordingly, either make the word element(s) match an accurate description of practical, consensus reality as much as you possibly can - or design them to make the statement funny.

Examples:
- ‘Your price is excessive: reduce it’ "IF YOU AGREE"
- ‘You have a unicorn hidden at the bottom of your garden' "ER'S PANTS"
- ‘Your president is not a crook’ "HE'S AN INCOMPETENT"
- 'Bullcorp does not pollute the atmosphere' "IN ALASKA"

*Generalising/Depotentiating
This works particularly well on 'Statements of Rights' type broken records but can be adapted to work equally well on most forms.
Basically what you do is allow the speaker to make his remark and then add to it the shift that: 'what applies for her/him also applies equally well for the rest of the world': i.e. (s)he is not unique and the broken record statement (s)he makes becomes modified to apply to the general case (thus depotentiating the 'ego' element).

As before, you add the same words/fragments monotonously every time they use the specific broken record pattern, giving as good (better by linguistic Aikido!) than you get.

Examples:
- I’m not going back to your house OR ANYBODY ELSE'S
- I have the right to state my wants and set my own priorities AND SO HAVE YOU
- I have the right to defend myself AS HAS ANYBODY ELSE
- I have the right to behave independently WITHOUT HARMING OTHERS
- I have the right to express my feelings AS HAVE ALL SENTIENT BEINGS
- Your president is not a crook ANY MORE THAN ANY OTHER POLITICIAN
- I don't like it when you ______ BUT I UNDERSTAND YOUR POSITION

The essential process here is to add word fragments/patterns that transform and de-energize the grossly one-sided, selfish point of view.

*Interrupt
This is potentially the most powerful form of pattern disruption by 'adding' on to tail ends in that, depending on the nature of the language fragments/patterns used, it will effectively derail the heavily fixated, looping thought processes of the speaker by causing temporal 'blank out' into 'Transderivational search' (that 'at best' can last for tens of seconds or at worst will break the broken record with a 'what?') as they attempt to make meaningful sense of what is happening to them.

In strict terms of pattern conditioning (and disruption) it is possible to additively associate anything with anything. Accordingly the sound pattern that arises in: 'I am a wonderful being' can be morphed severely into: 'I am a wonderful being/banana disgusting watchstrap' which will cause TDS and (if repeated) scrambling & derailing of meaning in any linguistic sense. More mildly (but smoothly and subtly) it can be sonically morphed into: 'I am a wonderful being/"myself is fun".' This interrupts by pivoting around the word 'being' and creates a grammatically ill formed, ambiguous double-statement (that simultaneously creates TDS by confusion, destroys the concrete, fixated form of the original assertion and implants a new one of: 'being myself is fun'. See elsewhere on this site with respect to 'word journeys' for more detail on this technique applies in most circumstances can change machine shop front row and column supporting roof .

The choice is yours: pure disruption by severe interrupt (and it is indeed amusing to see the gaping mouth and blank eyes of the fumbling erstwhile 'asserter') or the more creative subtle, gentle form. [See article below on: 'Practical Interrupts' for more information.]

Generally (for best confusion) you should use not less than a two word 'tail' - the exception being when the broken record pattern being directed against you ends in an ambiguous word or phrase you might be able to apply a single word with great effect.
In applying this technique you proceed as before by adding the same words/fragments monotonously every time they use the specific broken record pattern.

Examples:
- Your price is excessive: reduce it sky bingo dream
- I have the right to express my own opinions and values that of others as well
- I have the right to say 'yes' and 'no' for myself and I don't know yes no why not
- I have the right to change my opinion polls are often wrong footed
- I have the right to reject poor service charge me half
- You have a unicorn hidden at the bottom of your garden television is rubbish last tomorrow
- Your president is not a crooked house music water
- Bullcorp does not pollute the atmosphere window giraffe (pause 2,3) forget repeating

Exercise Hera: Re Petition in Language

[petition 1. n Asking, supplication, request; formal written supplication...
2. v.t. Make petition to (sovereign, etc. for thing, to do)
3. v.t. Ask humbly (for thing, to be allowed to do, etc.)] See also the breakdown of 'recite' into 're cite'.
This is a short exercise in creative writing that will illustrate the dependency of word or languaged consciousness (the predominant type in Western humanity) upon vocabulary and repetition of word pattern. It relates to 'broken record' in that our normal everyday view of the world is made up of a limited word set which, although we do not formally 'learn' to repeat as in assertiveness training, nevertheless works in/upon us in creating our own form of (subconscious & partly arbitrary) learned and repeated word sets.

To do this, you will need a pen, a sheet of A4 or larger paper and (optionally) a dictionary. Once you have these (and you actuialy have to DO this TO LEARN HANDS ON rather than just think about) then write a short essay on one of the following topics:

- today's news
- a film you have seen
- a favourite song
- how to drive a car
- how to prepare ground for planting
or
- how to cook a soft boiled egg

The catch here is that you must not use any word more than once (which is why you might find the dictionary handy).
Stop reading at the end of this paragraph and actually do this - and thus become aware of how often, in fact, you normally need to repeat and rely on repetition of elements of your existing vocabulary and how it confines you within its limits and within the aural sub-limits of its phonemes. Actually acquire the phonological awareness by doing and real-ise that not only do you write using these repetitive patterns, you also SPEAK and THINK in them and physically condition your being as you do.

Those words and language patterns that you find yourself wanting to repeat in this 'essay' example are the ones that comprise part of your own 'broken record' collection. You might re-write the essay 'free-style' later and find out what they comprise.

[Footnote: As a corollory of this exercise, note that the more extensive a person's vocabulary then the less inclined is that person to repeat (=fixate) themselves in word or thought. One can easily extend vocabulary - for example by opening a dictionary at random, finding a word one does not know & then using that word (say) at least three times in a day. Usage - our old friend repetition - makes it stick.]

Aside:Modern Politics and Repetition
'The fearful lesson from America'

"Likewise, and again rather depressingly, simplistic messages endlessly recycled prevailed over more complex arguments. Bush's stump sloganeering mattered more than Kerry's ascendancy in debate. This is the conclusion reached by one cabinet minister closely involved with Labour's election planning: 'You've got to have a strong message and stick to it.' Tory strategists agree that successful campaigning means repetition, repetition, repetition."
(Andrew Rawnsley: The Observer, Nov 2004. Follow link for full article)

Exercise Lazarus: Rebirth in Pattern Breaking

The following comprises a brief exercise in Mantra Yoga, but with the 'believing' and supposed spiritual elements of 'religion' thrown out in favour of the scientific base of vibratory physics.

The 'mantra yoga' here depends upon the psychologically effortless, specific, sustained and STRUCTURED vibration of the physical form such as to provide an effective oscillatory interrupt but without creating any further conditioning.

Thus a detached physical vibration is introduced into the body to supplant the extant (and normally predominantly chaotic) state. This at root - behind all the bluster and myth - is how mantra works in 'stilling' the mind process, but it also hypnotizes when used to excess. You will find several similar 'mantric' exercises on this page.

When you perform this exercise you will vibrate your vocal mechanism (and consequently the rest of your physical form) in unfamiliar ways. Oscillating any patterned form in a new way means change - direct, immediate change - and in performing this exercise you will change.

Take a few moments to read and practice pronunciation of the phrase shown below such that you can re-member it and can confidently utter it without hesitation. Once you can do this, simply repeat the phrase out loud (and that bit's important) at least eight times or more until you can remember it perfectly.

Try to vibrate the word form as a continuous sound stream on each repetition & pronounce the whole the same way each time: the unfamiliar words don't mean anything, so don't try to make them into anything:

craaroos uftant cluyeb glufsede
That's it.
Now forget about it until tomorrow and do it again - but at a diferent time and in a different place. Then do it again sometime next week if you like and it cleared your head, but don't stupefy yourself or make a habit or ritual of it (i.e. don't repeat it more than (say) a dozen times at any sitting & don't ever do multiple repetitions at the same place or time again.)

The Past as Memory

The 'past' does not exist except in the memory of individuals, in stored images of various kinds - visual, sound, taste, feeling, scent - in the cortex. Memory is usually accessed by energisation of the various stored image by word symbol, either spoken or generated in the mind as thinking which manifests as 'internal dialogue' in the sense of hearing.

Individual conscious memory is partial, incomplete and inaccurate and generally fades as the time period between experienced events and memorisation of them increases. Memory can be broadly divided into two principal types (although some overlap obviously occurs).

Certain types of memory: how to walk, read, ride a bicycle, talk, swim, drive a car, write, manipulate tools, etc. are learned by the body on a trial and error repetitive basis, often through feedback and imitation of others already able in these areas. These are ‘physical’ memories - things that the physical and nervous system has learned in order to function in the physical world.

On the other hand, there exist memories that exist principally in word and visual image - so called 'psychological’ memories - which can be observed to fall essentially into two categories: practical and reminiscence.

Practical Memories
These comprise things like knowing one’s name and address, how to find one's way home, how to boil an egg, where to find food, remembering where one put one's shoes, being able to read a map, etc. etc.
Each of us has a vast repertoire of these practical memories which we have usually learned by some process of repetition and imitation.

They are unlike 'body' memories in that no great physical motor skill (kinaesthetic learning) relies on them - although they often depend upon motor skills for their successful execution (e.g. map reading will depend upon the basic motor skills of reading, object manipulation and standing up, changing a fuse on tool use, knowing one's name and address on language.)
Practical and physical memories generally arise on the basis of need or effortless desire.

Reminiscence
These are made up of primarily of visual and word images of the behaviour of the self (and others) in situations that have gone. They depend upon the energisation of the nervous structure, with the form of word and/or visual images - in reaction to (principally) - habitual, repeated word images for their existence. Some typical language patterns predicating the energisation of reminiscence are:

- what if...
- can/do you remember...
- I remember...
- I/we used to...
- X used to...
- if only
- I should/shouldn't have...
- I could/couldn't have...
and similar

The predicates are followed by word patterns that relate to events that happened in the past, a past that only exists in memory, in imagination. This exists as fact: the past is imagination. It does not exist anywhere else, and events that have gone cannot be changed by any amount of speculation, words (thought or spoken), worry, repetition or conjuring of visual images.

Once a train of thought or conversation (= joint, collaborative expressed thought) has been established by such predicates, the essential character of that train will be maintained by the use of past participles (tenses) of verbs; in most vernacular speech and thinking this means that significant repetition of the following words occurs:

- was
- were
- said
- went
- had
- did
- remember
- recall

The unnecessary diversion of attention and energy into reminiscence changes nothing - apart from diverting energy, attention and awareness from the present and mesmerising those temporarily involved in such conversation or thinking. [Inattentive thinking in internal dialogue, also known as ’down time’, can usually be detected in others as it usually gets accompanied by a) stillness in body - especially neck and head - OR repetitive body motion, and b) eye fixation - often taking the form of looking at nothing in particular or ‘into space’: the 'doggy bowl dinner' effect.]

Reminiscence is impractical, it doesn't change anything; it is an act of inattention based upon habitual repetition of certain language predicates that create trains of speculative (mainly word) images.

Those images themselves are partial, incomplete, inaccurately remembered and full of omission owing to the manner in which word symbols naturally delete information from that which they attempt to describe.
As the meal is not the menu, neither is the (necessarily incomplete) memory of the menu the menu either. Once you have fished reading this article, go to Exercise Demeter and learn for yourself by observing how this operates in practical situations.

Exercise Demeter: Re Cognizing Reminiscence

The requirement is a public place, or general social gathering, with a number of people present, where you can observe conversation unobtrusively and perhaps circulate and join in without getting particularly committed or distracted.

What you have to do is LISTEN to the conversations that around you and notice how the occurrence of the language predicates:

- what if...
- can/do you remember...
- I remember...
- If only
- I/we used to...
- X used to...
- I should/shouldn't have...
- I could/couldn't have...
and similar

create the onset of impractical (of the nobody can change it kind) nostalgia and reminiscences and how those reminiscences sustain continuity by the repetition of the past tenses of verbs - in particular:

- was
- were
- remember
- recall
- said
- went
- had
- did

The processes of reminiscence are learned, they are contagious and they can become habitual - indeed some people seem to be more addicted to energising the imaginary state that comprises the past than they are to other vices such as smoking, etc.
You don’t have to do anything except observe at the moment but, since the ultimate interruption of these habitual behaviours is the purpose of this page, you might choose to begin to not participate in reminiscence - if engaged by others in such dialogue - by issuing a polite: ’I don’t do nostalgia’ or ’the past is but a memory’, etc. and immediately interrupt by changing the subject. Break the pattern, break the habit.

An Example of Severe Pattern Interrupt

And For my Next Trick
(Derren Brown on Practical Interrupts)
"He was leaving a hotel at three in the morning after attending a magic convention when he was confronted by a large, drunken man displaying a clear appetite for random assault.
'I was wearing a velvet jacket and velvet waistcoat,' recalls Brown. 'It wasn't looking good.'
'What the fuck are you looking at?' the drunk asked as he squared up to Brown's face.
'There's not much you can say to that kind of question,' observes Brown on reflection. 'But what you can do is act completely out of context. So I said: '''The wall outside my house isn't four feet high.''' The drunk's eyes narrowed in confusion.'
'What?' he asked.
Then Brown hit him with another broadside.
'Ah, you see, when I was in Spain, they were about seven foot high. But look at them here - they're tiny.'

The fledgling mind-magician took a deep breath and waited to see if his strategy had worked.
'I was expecting him to get so confused that his mind would become susceptible to some kind of hypnotic suggestion,' Brown explains. 'What happened was he actually shouted out: '''Oh Fuck!''' and burst into tears. I spent the next 10 minutes sitting on the kerb trying to give him advice about his girlfriend.' "

['The Guide': Guardian, April 3 2004]

Exercise Apollo: Awareness of Repetition in Advertising

As given, advertisers use patterned repetition to condition the consciousness of potential buyers in favour of the advertiser's message.
The process often deploys sophisticated techniques (visual suggestion, unspoken associations with 'brand' and desirability, metaphor, bandwagon, testimony, pseudo-science and artfully vague statements, etc.) but more often than not, this gets delivered in conjunction with the crude 'propagandistic' technique of repetitive exposure of the viewer/listener/reader to some simple slogan or jingle.
Examples of this are 'the real thing', 'go to work on an egg', 'you'll wonder where the yellow went' and so on.

The word repetitions, either spoken, sung or in writing (which gets converted into internal dialogue in the reader) become PARALLEL or COMPOUNDED with visual and non-language aural associations.
Likewise, the use of internal repetitions (in slogans) of music, rhyme, rhythm, alliteration etc. implants tonal associations and repetitions which act as mnemonics for the slogan and/or the product name (see elsewhere on this page).
As examples we have: 'CO cA CO lA' [alliteration, rhyme and rhythmic association; this one is a work of genius - conscious or unconscious? - see later], 'CLunK CLiCK every trIp' [alliteration, rhyme and rhythm: note the 'internal' alliteration of the trailing K/CK] and 'Murray Mints, Murray Mints - too good to hurry mints' [internal repetition, rhyme, rhythm and music].

This exercise relates to observing and negating the use of repetition in slogan and works as follows:

a) for each session choose a medium that is used as a vehicle for advertising (TV, radio or print)

b) when you come across an advertisement, listen/watch/read until the first repetition of:

- word
- musical phrase (melody, harmony or accompaniment)
- rhythmic (word) pattern
- rhyme
- alliteration
occurs.

When you notice such a repetition then CHANGE CHANNEL (on TV or radio) or TURN THE PAGE (printed medium). Avoid repeating the pattern you have noticed, rather count to twenty on the new channel (TV/radio) then flick back to the ads and begin observing again or look for the next ad (printed medium) and spot the next pattern.

It is important that you:
a) PHYSICALLY ACT in negation/interrupt and that
b) you don't repeat, outwardly or mentally, the pattern you observe - since to do so will perpetuate rather than interrupt it.

Using this exercise will significantly (and rapidly) increase your sensitivity to mind dulling repetition - particularly when you find yourself quite spontaneously spotting and responding to rhythm pattern and rhyme and alliteration pattern (both of the latter comprise low level phonemic repetition).
All of these normally bypass consciousness. Your sensitivity, as with all these exercises, will expand rapidly beyond the nominal 'exercise field' into other spheres of your experience.

Don't just do this once or with one medium.
Do this exercise whenever you find yourself subject to advertising and, rather than becoming dulled by it, use it to make yourself increasingly sensitive. The growing sensitivity is ultimately that which will effortlessly have done with non-essential conditioned behaviours.

Repetition, Perceptual Conditioning and 'News'

It can be shown that something like 80% of the information that gets presented to the general public by the mass media as 'news' in fact originates from what might be broadly called 'authority' - central and local government, political parties, government departments, police, courts, medical, scientific and religious bodies and so on - across the broad swathe of media which includes National and local TV, radio and press. [This figure is established for democratic countries; in nations with more authoritarian forms of government it is higher.]

The majority of the remaining 20% of supposed 'news' mainly concerns celebrity, sport and other forms of entertainment and 'information' originating from corporate sources.

The reasons for this situation are complex - social engineering and spin by government and their agents, uncritical, lazy and compliant journalism, complicit self-censorship, editorial policies, various forms of propaganda and campaigning, the 'need' to keep owners/advertisers/sponsors happy, covering topics taken up by rivals, giving the public 'what they want', etc, etc.
This is a complex area of study in itself and need not overly concern us here.

What does concern us is the use of mass media in disseminating particular viewpoints by means of repetition with the effect that supposed 'news' (most of which is not 'new', novel or contemporaneous) becomes nothing more than propaganda, the content of which is established by the originators, enabled and distributed, often unwittingly and/or uncritically, by print and electronic broadcasters, such as to condition and manipulate public perception.

Interlude: Exercise Mercury

You aren't expected to 'believe'; anything you read on this site (and by inference anywhere else), but to assess, think through and find evidence to prove things for yourself. This exercise deals with 'news' analysis & you are advised to do it exactly as prescribed such as to make the information you gather as unshakeably 'real' and practical to your knowledge system as anything else you might have practical knowledge of. If you do it properly it will take you several hours of work - but you should find it rewarding since done properly, the insight brought about will be yours for the rest of your days.
Proceed as follows:

a) turn on your radio and observe the content of the next news program that appears. Make a verbatim note of the headline of each story. Below it, make a brief note of the content and a verbatim note of one or two of the phrases used in each story
b) turn on your TV and do the same with the next TV news
c) change channel on the radio and TV and repeat a) and b) above when the next news comes on
d) head for the streets and purchase three heavyweight 'serious' newspapers and three downmarket tabloids
e) back home, re-tune radio and TV to original channels and repeat steps a) and b)

Now, to analyse the results, get three coloured markers (say blue, green and red) and proceed as follows.

i) bearing in mind the opening paragraphs of this article, identify the probable source/type of each of the stories in your radio and TV notes and in the newspapers and write it across them in red
ii) for stories that deal with the same subject, number them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. in blue, irrespective of whether they came from radio/TV or press. [e.g. a story about say a flu epidemic would be numbered 1, on every document, a train crash 2, one about a particular bank robbery 3 and so on...]
iii) for each of the stories, and each repeat of the stories, underline in green any words or groups of words that have been repeated

Now look at your handiwork and assess the relative proportion of the sources that underlie them, the amount of repetition of common word groups ('the message'), irrespective of the various media forms, and the number of times that those word forms would likely to be repeated to you on electrical media in (say) twelve hours were you to stay tuned into every radio or TV bulletin.
Do the same word forms appear in 'headlines', the story body and any 'reminders' of the headlines that are issued in one bulletin/across bulletins (why do we need 'reminders'; why are precisely the same word patterns used - even in supposedly separate and independent bulletins?)

What about slanting and cliché?
Do you detect evidence of slanting of fact by means of adverb/adjective, stereotype and cliché? Are there any 'EVIL dictators' in there, 'drug BARONS', 'RAMPAGING lunatics', 'MAD axe men', 'CHEATING celebrities' 'ABSOLUTE certainties' and the like?
What about the political news?
Is the man with a gun 'an insurgent', 'a freedom fighter', 'an invader', 'a member of the coalition forces' or 'one of our brave boys'? What are the implied perceptual structures presented in the 'news' relating to objects, characters and events in the stories? Are they fair and genuine, or can you detect spin and prejudice?

Now, and this is the ultimate test in terms of validity, consider what practical use the information might be to you, and further, if it is actually 'news' (in terms of being valuable, informative and up to date) or whether it has degenerated into something else.

And so...

The fact is that repetition conditions perception.
The 'news' you have appraised might be topical, or more rarely even useful, when attended to once a day, but beyond that, as your data should be demonstrating, it becomes nothing but organised, sophisticated and irrelevant propaganda that dulls the mind.

Knowledge brings action - and you know where the off switch is.

Cliché, Slogan and Sound Bite

"In all fields of endeavour, repetition is one of the more powerful ways in which a community establishes its 'facts', but the facts thus established are often unsound. The scientific community is not immune."
[Ross Hesketh]

How Pattern Implicitly Affects Consciousness
The fact of the matter is that the patterns which get repeated most (and particularly those that get repeated in an organized & regular fashion) become paramount in the conditioning of consciousness in both its collective (cultural) and individual forms; the whole exists as a function of the parts.
'Pattern', in the broad context, means ANY pattern - sonic, visual, kinaesthetic (physical body feeling), olfactory (scent) or gustatory (taste) that repeatedly impinges on and thus affects the human physical sensory/nervous as a whole The term includes internally generated imaging in the form of visualization, non-verbal sound imaging and internal dialogue. Pattern affects consciousness implicitly because consciousness comprises awareness channelling through pattern in creating form.

Language and Consciousness
In the latter stages of the second millennium AD human consciousness became increasingly focussed in language (indeed one might point out that the focus of mankind's consciousnes awareness currently lies trapped predominantly in the 4 modes Ve, Aed, Vi and Aid from the ten available in a five sense external/internal 5tuple). This occurred primarily because of:

- the advent of the printing press in Europe in the 15th century
- the Industrial Revolution which brought the widespread introduction of low cost mass-production and power printing
- the parallel improvements in general wealth, health, standards of living, social and educational standards
- political changes
- telephony and telegraphy
- commercialism and advertising
- rudimentary understanding of psychology and use of propaganda
- the unprecedented rise of mass media in the form of printed works and wireless audio and visual broadcast
and in the past thirty years:
- mobile telephony
- computer and computer networking

As a result of these changes - occurring first of all in Western Europe but spreading ever more rapidly and cascading into other geographical areas and other cultures - an almost universal literacy has come about and with it an ever increasing dependency on, and focussing of attention in, LANGUAGED thinking (in Aid mode arisng from both visual and spoken word input, and general commonality/consensus in that thinking by virtue of restricted vibratory symbol sets), and hence a restless, chattering, linguistically driven perception largely restricted within the confines of the particular language symbols.

Mankind has slowly lost it's former innocence, tranquillity and quietude of the agrarian Middle-Ages. In return for undeniable material wealth (and breaking free of the shackles of organised religion and superstition), the majority of humanity has lost the opportunity for quiet meditation, time to contemplate and freedom from the gross intrusion of the oscillating patterns we recognize as word. All gone, superseded by collective endless noise and chatter that impinge on the individual consciousness (which reciprocates by adding to the chaos in the collective consciousness) from all directions and increase with every day that passes as population grows and the gabbling in the planetary chicken coop intensifies with number and packing density.

Furthermore, once this noise has permeated into the individual mind, (i.e. when one becomes a member of the languaging group as a child and develops the languaged 'I' image of ego), it becomes self perpetuating owing to the associating nature of memory and it's ability to connect the sounds of various vibratory grunt symbols not only with 'real' objects in an 'external' physical world but with the 'internal' store associative symbols and images that comprise language in memory.
The reactive energization of this memory may occur by either external or internal stimulus in any given situation, but once set in motion internal stimulus perpetuates itself in the form of the almost endless and mainly useless noise of internal dialogue that fills the majority of the modern human being's waking hours.
Aldous Huxley, in drawing attention to what he perceived as large scale causes and effects rather than microscopic causes, put it thus:

'The twentieth century is, among other things, the Age of Noise. Physical noise, mental noise and noise of desire - we hold history's record for all of them. And no wonder; for all the resources of our almost miraculous technology have been thrown into the current assault against silence.

That most popular and influential of all recent inventions, the radio [and nowadays TV] is nothing but a conduit through which pre-fabricated din can flow into our homes. And this din goes far deeper, of course, than the eardrums. It penetrates the mind, filling it with a Babel of distractions, blasts of corybantic or sentimental music, continually repeated doses of drama that bring no catharsis, but usually create a craving for daily or even hourly emotional enemas.

And where, as in most countries, the broadcasting stations support themselves by selling time to advertisers, the noise is carried from the ear, through the realms of phantasy, knowledge and feeling to the ego's core of wish and desire.

Spoken or printed, broadcast over the ether or on wood-pulp, all advertising copy has but one purpose - to prevent the will from ever achieving silence.

Desirelessness is the condition of deliverance and illumination. The condition of an expanding and technologically progressive system of mass production is universal craving. Advertising is the organized effort to extend and intensify the workings of that force, which (as all the saints and teachers of all the higher religions have always taught) is the principal cause of suffering and wrong-doing and the greatest obstacle between the human soul and its Divine Ground.'

We shall investigate the processes of 'desire' later on this page.
Meanwhile, within the context of the present article - which has to do with the specific symbol conditioning we call 'language' occurring in speech, writing, and verbalised thought (which all ultimately manifest in the individual in the sense of hearing) - the patterning that concerns us relates to word and how repetition of various word patterns affects consciousness.

A Small Experiment
You need to actually carry this out such as to gather evidence first hand in order to make the understanding your own based on your own observations. Proceed as follows:

1) choose a prominent person (X) who appears regularly in the news who you actually dislike - politician, celebrity, or sports person
2) note that the word 'bongar' describes a poisonous Indian snake
3) write down the sentence 'X is a bungling bongar' on a small card, substituting the name of your chosen prominent person for 'X'.
4) read the sentence out loud NINE TIMES at the same speed, in the same voice tones and with the same short gap between each repetition. Use emphatic tones or monotones, fast or slow speech as you wish - but once you have chosen a form then stick to it
5) pause for fifteen seconds
6) repeat steps 4) and 5)
7) repeat steps 4) and 5)
8) put the card away in a pocket or purse
9) repeat steps 4) to 7) inclusive on the following day - again using same tones, speech rates and pauses. Read from the card to make sure you are word perfect.
10) do this every day for a week

The purpose of the exercise is to condition yourself with the particular (and uncommon) language pattern - the conditioning (at 189 repetitions total) is relatively minor with respect to any typical language pattern conditioning, but it is organised and deliberate - and then observe how such conditioning works in your consciousness. Once you have this pattern established, reinforce it by repeating steps 4) through 7) (say) once a week just to refresh it. Work at this, take it seriously - for it is. You are actually in process of discovering some remarkable things about yourself and it's well worth the minimal effort.

In the OBSERVATION part of the exercise watch your reactions - speech or internal dialogue - whenever you get involved in a conversation about X or see/hear a news story about X. Do this for a week or two until you discover what is actually going on inside yourself, how it affects your relationship and attitude with/toward X and others & take a note of how many times you have to explain what a 'bongar' is.
Once you have observed the patterning working, then drop the reinforcement and just watch.

Exercise Morpheus: Awareness of Pattern in Song and Music

Carry out this awareness exercise at home or in a car (stationary or as a passenger). The essential equipment comprises a multi-stream (at least three) source of continuous audible music channels - the ideal being a multi-channel radio or television with remote control. The exercise is again based upon interruption of continuity by detecting repetition - but is more complex than those given previously.

Multiple sources of music, with or without attached words (song) is the essential requirement. Music/song (as in inc(H)antation and enCHANTment) comprises a rich source of pattern - the most complex, organised sources of aural pattern created by humankind. There exist repeating forms in:

- rhythm (absolute and relative)
- pitch (absolute and relative)
- combined rhythm and pitch sequence (phrase and melody)
- timbre/instrument and combinations thereof
- harmony
- lyric - repeating words, rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, phoneme (in the case of song)

Because huge variations of combinations of these can occur, the detection of repeats in music can be an order of magnitude more difficult than detection in the spoken word. Additionally, and since the rates of repetition in music can be exceedingly high and often monotonous (e.g. drumbeats, rhythm pulses in bass/percussion - indeed much music, especially song form, is effectively musical mantra), if one were to detect 'any' repetition then the exercise would become trivial in terms of interrupting on every fraction of every beat & exercises exploring interruption of trance inducing rhythms and tones will come later once you are a little more practiced and alert. Accordingly, for now, use a middle-way approach thus:

1. turn on the sound source and tune to an appropriate channel (channel ’A’ say)
2. listen to the music/song and immediately you hear a repeated WORD, or distinct MUSICAL PHRASE (on any instrument or voice - including non-momotonous bass and drum patterns) then switch to another channel (channel ‘B’, say)
3. listen again to the music/song and immediately you hear a repeat, as in 2 above, then switch to another channel (channel ‘C’, say)
4. carry on as in steps 2 and 3, switching to a new channel every time any word or phrase gets repeated
5. if you come across a speech stream onm a channel change (e.g. an advertisement) then just change chamnnel when you hear a word repeat

To carry out this exercise effectively demands extreme alertness, an alertness that improves rapidly with practice. The apparent simplicity here belies effectiveness - and you should find yourself shifting channel up to ten times faster than you were in the pure speech exercise - and do be sure to physically change channel such as to ACTUALLY interrupt the continuity of the sound sequences.
As given previously, you will miss quite a few of the repeats in the early stages (and strangely enough realise 'wordlessly' that you’ve missed them) but let them go and just press ahead until the next repeat and switch. You will observe, by doing, that your sensitivity to both repeating melodic and word patterns progressively improves with practice. This rapid improvement comes about in consequence of the natural stilling (by negation) of internal dialogue by the act of attention

Again, you don’t deliberately try to change anything (except sound channel) with this, it is a consciousness expansion exercise which heightens your awareness.

This exercise can be performed alone (probably best not doing it if your partner is watching TV!), or it can be played as a very entertaining (and cooperative) game with two or more participants. Inside a stationary car is a very good place as you can do it unnoticed.

Exercise Kronos: Compound Mantric Form in Verse

As well as cliche, chant, slogan, jingle and 'motto', poetry and music contain repetitive figurative vibratory elements that enable them to modify the consciousness of the listener by persistent excitation of neurone groups. The more a neurone group gets triggered by a particular signal, the more that signal modifies the group in its own image and thus obtains priority in memory.

Accordingly when memory responds (the process which comprises the essence of 'thinking') then it responds preferentially in terms of the patterns that dominate the neurone structure (also referred to as 'islands in consciousness' elsewhere in this article).

Poetic and musical forms use various repetition (= low frequency forced oscillation) techniques to take hold of consciousness. Some of these comprise:

- direct repetition of complete sound forms (individual words, phrases, sentences)
- repetition of syllable and morpheme (through alliteration and rhyme)
- repetition of pitch
- timbral repetition
- rhythm

In certain forms - especially in songs that evoke strong emotional feelings ('I will need you for ever' etc.) - the implicit asociative mantric repetition can actually condition powerful negative depressive states, 'song' being probably the most powerful mnemonic form known to mankind. Once conditioned, re-association (by the song, music or word) will re-evoke these states in the manner of NLP 'anchor triggering',

This can also be turned around and put to beneficial use. If no 'emotional' form (or any other meaningful word form) has attachment to a complex word group, then such structured groups can be used as powerful mantric (=vibratory)interrupts.

The following 'poetic' mantra demonstrates a typical rhythmic 'verse' form with compound internal structure.[Note the overall structure & internal repetitions and compare with popular song and poetry].
As before with mantramic form, take a few moments to read and practice pronunciation of the 'poem' shown below such that you can confidently utter it without hesitation. Once you can do this, simply repeat the phrase out loud (that bit's important) at least eight times.

Try to vibrate each line as a continuous sound stream on each repetition & pronounce the whole the same way each time: the unfamiliar words don't mean anything, so don't try to make them into anything:

kah kah prela
spustle spustle chank sul
eeb plits sleple
eeb plits sleple
kah kah prela
spustle spustle chank sul
jux jux rokey mip
spustle prela rokey mip

That's it.
If you wish to use it as a standing interrupt, copy it out and carry it with you for occasional use - but always at a diferent time and in a different place.
Don't stupefy yourself or make a habit or ritual of it (i.e. don't repeat it more than (say) a dozen times at any sitting).

Negation of Incoming External Conditioning

By now, if you have persisted with the exercises and read the text commentaries given previously, you should have awareness that:

a) conditioning of the upper reaches of the nervous system occurs principally through repetition
b) you are surrounded by repetition in all manner of patterned forms
c) words are a particular form of sonic form and that the repetition of words - individual, in phrases and particularly in rhythmic alliterative and rhyme form (i.e. slogans, jingles and mottos) is used by those who wish to confine and direct attention in particular directions of their choosing

The objectives of those who might wish to condition you with their points of view are likely to be as diverse as those very points of view, but one thing is for sure and that is when you come across sonic repetition in speech - especially when it includes rhyme, alliteration and slogan/cliché - then the originator of such is attempting to condition your thinking processes and selectively program your memory.

Advertisers use these techniques (think of a particularly annoying jingle), as do religious and political propagandists, corporate and institutional bodies & their agents (some naively), and self-seeking manipulative individuals.

Obvious repetitive conditioning often occurs thus:

a) in direct time sequence (repeating single words or syllables e.g. 'SEQUENTIAL, SEQUENTIAL, etc.).A blatant example of this is the meaningless: 'Education, Education, Education' rant used in the UK 2001 election.
b) contiguously - in fragments - by the continual, but more subtle non-continuous, repetition of particular words and phrases (as in 'Let's talk about ZEUS. ZEUS knows EVERYTHING YOU do, absolutely EVERYTHING, and he keeps WRITten RECORDS. YOU can be sure that ZEUS WRITes EVERYTHING about YOU down in his book of RECORDS...') It's more often than not that blatant and simplistic - but the effect of this kind of repetition is powerful and hypnotic in that it overloads and distorts the listener's perceptual processes by repeatedly, and deliberately, placing undue emphasis on specific words/concepts and directing attention towards them. (When senses are stimulated then that very motion in the sensory apparatus creates the experience we name 'attention': repetitive stimulation narrows attention on itself.)
c) by repetition of identical, word (and often time and tone) perfect messages/slogans/instructions periodically over extended time scales. E.g. Word perfect, 'news' bulletins, official announcements and jingles in commercial breaks that appear periodically (and not necessarily regularly - see previous section with respect to effective advertising) throughout a given time period.
d) in the repetition of cliché, slogan and motto occurs. These 'mantras' supposedly contain kernels of wisdom related to the topic being propagated but on closer inspection such 'wisdom' turns out to be meaningless drivel BUT a form of drivel that is very carefully structured rhythmically and tonally so that it is easy to remember, chant and roll easily of the tongue. Such repeating mantramic form overwhelms and dulls the senses of the listener and speaker alike & ultimately causes the neurochemical patterning of the listener to resonate with that of the speaker such that the former absorbs the point of view. In extremis, this process (of narrowed repeating attention) resembles a hypnotic state.
Examples of this type of mantric form are: 'Think Drink Pink Gin' (rhyme and rhythm), 'Eine Volk, Eine Reich, Eine Fuhrer' (word repetition and rhythm) and 'Buy Big BiLL's BuLLburgers' (external and internal alliteration).
e) in emotionally ill-formed song lyrics, the extreme multilple repetitions of which vastly exceed the normal constraints of everyday prose speech by means of presentation as 'song' (would you permit someone to come up to you in the street and whine: 'I can't live without her/him anymoOOoore...' at you twenty times? Such structures are common in 'song' (and song is arguably one of the most powerful mnemonics available to humans) and they perniciously invade and distort consciousness - particularly that of vulnerable teenagers - with emotional negativity since their thought processes eventually become entrained with these words.
f) By participation - and this is possibly the worst form. In the more pernicious forms of conditioning you will be invited to 'join in' the process by repetition of (speaker given) word forms and associated rituals of physical behaviour (which further reinforce the patterning). Think company song, parrot style 'learning', political slogan, hymn, prayer and religious ritual, football and protest chants, etc.

The foregoing examples illustrate some of the more obvious ways that repetition is used to manipulate human consciousness; there are other, far more subtle ways which you should be on the lookout for (for example the componding of sonic and visual images) - but they will inevitably rely upon some form of repetition.

Given your now heightened sensitivity to sonic repetition, acquired through the earlier exercises, you should now be able to see through much of this, spot any attempts to condition you virtually immediately and take action against them. You can act, either by:
- immediate interruption or contra-diction
- removing the source (see below)
- moving away from the influence of the source.

You are now aware these processes and no longer have to endure them.

The choice is yours.

Conditioning Influences

'Open the window
and the breeze might blow in.'
[Krishnamurti]

Significant exposure to the repetitive (hence oscillatory) inputs to the human nervous system indicated below will create disproportionate and generally harmful patterns of conditioning that in turn desensitise perception and awareness. Additionally, many of these behaviours are 'de-inviduating' (tend to take away individuality and render the subject a member of a crowd or group of various kinds) and are deliberately used by thosde who would seek to manipulate such bodies.

The repetition of stimulli in the classes shown - either in isolation or compound form - inevitably creates preferential islands and 'noise' in consciousness as it forms semi-permanent association patterns in the electro-neurochemistry of the nervous system (as discussed elsewhere on this page). This happens as inevitably as the blacksmiths hammer forges hot metal into shape on his anvil or as Pavlov's bell conditioned the dogs.

In due course, with extended repetition and exposure, the repeated stimuli form themselves into elements that participate in the normal reference state of the nervous system as an implicit part of actual percepual and conceptual currency.

The reader will note that in a modern non-ascetic society it is impossible to entirely avoid the stimulli types indicated, but nevertheless a serious and alert observer will find it relatively easy to significantly reduce exposure either by bringing the activity to a halt or moving away from its source - and in doing so s(he) will reduce radically the internal noise and obscuring agitation that such oscillations impart in the mind pool.

The foundations for this action have already been laid in the various exercises given above: it remains now to apply them in day to day environments. As this takes place, the internal forces that sustain non-essential conditioning become negated and atrophy. In tandem, as this conditioning structure dissolves, then slowly, but certainly, a state of heightened sensitivity and alertness spontaneously arises - the awakening of intelligence.

The barrier to enhanced awareness and the essential nature of ignorance comprise one and the same thing - non-essential electro-neurochemical noise that has developed in parallel with, and in consequence of, mankind's linguistic split consciousness: (see link below on Practical Choiceless awareness with regard to 'essential').

The non-essential noise originates in unconscious, patterned oscillation (repetition) of elemnts of the physical body, oscillation that actually posesses energetic momentum. Once stilled, and the foregoing exercises present numerous direct techniques for this, the deep awareness - which comprises the ground of unconditioned being - naturally manifests.

Raising Awareness: Some Behaviors it is Best to Avoid Exposure to, or Involvement in

You can avoid repetitive, external forced oscillation of your body and nervous system and subsequent vibronic entrainment by:

a) moving away from the vibrating source
b) interrupting the source
c) modifying the impacting pattern of the source
d) non-participation with the forcing oscillation

Be aware that forcing repetitive oscillations come in all sensory modes (visual, aural, kinesthetic, taste and scent and combinations thereof), multiple forms, shapes, sizes and can comprise simple and compound FREQUENCIES ranging from UHF to ULF. Note that in the manner of Newton's first law of motion, once a body (and that includes a human body) has been set in a state of periodic motion then it will persist in that state until compelled by an external oscillation to do otherwise.

In layman's terms, once you have acquired a habit (=a state of conditioning) then it will stick until something occurs that unsticks it. Break pattern, break habit.

Non-essential exposure to the following sources can (and most likely will) create unnecessary conditioning. You can best kick a habit by not acquring it in the first place:

[The list is incomplete and in no particular order... (see 305/405 downloads for text: cross refer to immediate choiceless awareness page wrt essential & non-essential (check wording) behaviours))]

Exercise Rephous: Further Expansion of Awareness: Sonic Repetition

This more powerful consciousness expansion exercise emulates Exercise Orpheus given earlier BUT DRIVES DEEPER IN REVEALING THE MECHANISMS BY WHICH WE ACTUALLY RE-COGNIZE SONIC VIBRATION and ultimately convert it into meaning: this normally occurs as an unconscious process. Proceed as with Execise Orpheus - the essential equipment, as previously, comprises a multi-stream (at least three) source of continuous audible human language the ideal being a multi-channel radio or television.

The spoken word or song are both effective in this exercise, but this time you have to act upon noticing the repetition of sound fragments rather than 'wholes' - and these sound fragments can occur at exceedingly high rates and will demand a high level of silent attention to catch:

1. turn on the sound source and tune to an appropriate channel (channel ’A’ say)
2. listen to the speech/song and immediately you hear a repeated sound fragnment or PHONEME (i.e. syllable) then switch to another channel (channel ‘B’, say)
3. listen again to the speech/song and immediately you hear a repeated phoneme then switch to another channel (channel ‘C’, say)
4. avoid repeating the sound fragments you hear repeated (you will cannot pay attention to the incoming sound stream if you do); the exercise is to raise your situational awareness and get your body to act directly, not cause the mind to parrot
5. carry on as above, switching to a new channel every time a word repeats

As with 'Orpheus', the simplicity of the exercise belies its effectiveness. You will certainly miss quite a few of the repeats in the early stages (and strangely enough realise you’ve missed them) but don’t let that bother you.

Don't go back, the moment has gone so don't bother trying to re-evoke it in memory: pay attention and press ahead until the next repeat and switch. You will observe, by doing, that your sensitivity to repeating patterns improves progressively, and universally (not just in sound), improves with practice, and that your 'unconscious' mind acts far more rapidly than mere verbalising. Ultimately, this direct learning will make the body kinesthetically alert (the body, at root, does the 'listening' and the acting kinesthetically), and such awareness will effortlessly protect you from repetitive (vibrational) conditioning. (NLP readers note that '4tuple' represents (part of a 5-sense) MODEL of sensory processes, and that ultimately all apparently differentiated 'senses' depend upon various vibrational sensastions in kinesthetic awareness: this exercise directly redirects attention from Aed through Aea into Ke whilst the rapt attention required implicitly negates the downtime conditioned disturbance/noise of Aid).

Again, you don’t deliberately try to change anything with this (except radio channel!), it is a consciousness expansion exercise which heightens your awareness - and in time that heightened awareness will act directly. You will certainly, and very rapidly, notice the repetitive nature of the (sonic) linguistic patterning that bombards your consciousness from the mass media everyday (especially in the form of emotionally and logically malformed song-pattern repetitions). That alertness, once awakened, will extend far beyond mere mass-media patterning into day to day life.

To be fully effective, you need to do this for several sessions of preferablty not less than 20 minutes duration. Be sure not to repeat the words you observe repeating, rather actually physically CHANGE CHANNEL (remote control is OK, probably best) and then listen attentively for the next repeat.
You will find that your body can act far more rapidly in spontaneously identifying and responding to patterened (sonic in this case) vibration than the (second-hand, inattentive) behaviour of 'mind' in registering/repeating internally of observed words, so don't repeat them!

The purpose of all this is to increase attention - not to get entrained with the language content of any particular channel (which is in fact an act of inattention with regard to immediate surroundings).

This exercise can be performed alone (probably best not doing it if your partner is watching TV!), or it can be played as a very entertaining (and cooperative) game with two or more participants.
If you don't have steering wheel radio controls, best not do this in a moving vehicle alone; although the exercise actually increases all round alertness, fiddling around trying to switch radio channels may distract you from driving.

Appendix A:
Dealing With Repetitive Form in Established Pattern

This exists in all manner of areas that were established in child conditioning and will be addressed by means of example and exercise.
When you were at elementary school, and before and after, you were taught, mainly by rote, certain forms of pattern which conditioned your psyche and serve to this very day as fundamental building blocks in the deep structure of your consciousness.
Examples of these are:

* learning the alphabet (wow, I'll never ever manage to learn that long list)
* counting
* learning to read and write (do you remember how difficult it was to differentiate between b and p and that one has his tail above the line and one below, and how hard it was to form those letters at first no matter how you tried?)
* certain associative acronyms and abbreviations, indeed the very essence of the abstract process of abbreviation that Every Good Boy Deser...
* fixed patterns of various numbers and word groups... '3.1**', 'as thick as a *****'?????'
* association of sound pattern to object and action (language)

The list is incomplete - indeed you would do well to add to it from your own experience such as to establish consciously your own tendencies.

Now, some of these things are entirely useful and some not. Things acquired parrot style at an early age are particularly damaging in that they deeply impress the plastic child brain and fix it in position by mechanically repeating the same patterns ad nauseum. In doing this, they severely limit deep natural intelligence and heavily condition perception - as if repeatedly hitting a perfectly formed metallic mirror with a hammer until it distorts reflections.

These patterns can be disrupted by using some of the techniques explained elsewhere in this document. For purposes of brevity, the disruption exercises alone are presented below.

Exercise Neptune

a) Repeat the following list of numbers and letters out loud. (Yes, repeat! You are in process of breaking the grip of a deep established form and, in the absence of very acute awareness, general randomness/chaos - which you can't access directly anyway since your behaviour is already structurally fixated by years of past conditioning - is insufficient). Do so until you can enter the list at any point and re cite the subsequent sequence from memory without any hesitation or any error.

7025
TL
9641
OAY
53728
KVMH
608374
UQWLR

b) now go back to step a) and repeat the list backwards (RLWQR 473806, etc.) until you have it off by heart.
This is going to take you some time, but persist, like you did when you were a child learning the alphabet and counting, until you master it. Note that the list is not randomly organised and we'll be coming back to it in a future exercise or two. Once you've learnt it both ways, forget about it for the time being.

Exercise Mibreephtyu

Print off and repeat each word group in the following word set twice and out loud (yes, do it in private!). Do the whole list (twice per group) ten times, four times a day for a two weeks. Be sure to extend the sounding of the double letter groups e.g. pronounce 'oo' as 'ooooo' in 'Moo' etc:

dovikpel unoo
ospenthalt iptor
wisroojaf doa
maashuaniz ap ak
owdruf trej
amgrik yeelosh
im dref taa
mil wah shooy
im dref trej
wisroo maashuan

Carry the list with you. When the two weeks are up, repeat each word group ten times every time you hear a piece of 'techno' or 'rap' music playing.
Throw the list away after three months and forget it.
[Note that although you may find some of these exercises appear rather amusing and trivial at first sight, rest assured that they have powerful transformative effects. This one works on the physical oscillatory mechanisms of the spoken word - which actually condition the entire physical system. For the basis follow link to Arhythmic Atonal Interrupt below.]

Exercise Pluto

Repeat the following list of colours in the order given. Do it out loud until you can enter the list at any point and re cite the sequence from memory without error.

white indigo yellow red pink violet blue orange green

Exercise Minerva

Repeat the following numerical tone poem out loud as given. Do it as rhythmically as you can until you know it by heart.

seven two
five
nine one
four eight three
six

Exercise Brahma

The following word set comprises a powerful mantra (and if you have read this far it should be dawning on you)
Try to repeat it orally, rhythmically with some measure of tune in your voice - using the same rhythm and tones with each of the word. If you find the tone/rhythms gently shifting as you establish the pattern, flow with it until you find a natural, effortless recurrent form and then stay with that until you have it word/rhythm/tone perfect in memory.

when tau gree
roar wife
nix nevn
oyt kine
zen gra
nux din

Appendix B: A Fable

"Wake up lazybones, wake up. Time to go to work! Work, you hear me, work!"
With his purple pointed shoe, Iktar the imp poked Oleg hard in the ribs. A loud grunt interrupted the giant's rhythmic snoring. He blinked and opened his eyes.

"Oh dear," he said slowly in his deep, gentle voice, "is it morning already? I was having a wonderful dream. I dreamt I was a king living in golden palace in the clouds. In the palace gardens there were butterflies that sang like angels. Just before you woke me up, one of them was singing a special song for me." He sat up and rubbed his eyes. "I forget what the song was about now though."
"Never mind all that, never mind," snapped the imp shrilly. He jumped down and dragged a basin almost as big as himself across the stone floor, "here's your breakfast. Eat it up quickly or we'll be late. Quickly now, quickly. Mustn't be late."
Oleg sat up on his gigantic bed, lifted the basin in one hand and, grasping a huge wooden spoon in the other, ponderously ate the wheat-flakes. The imp paced up and down the huge room impatiently, but Oleg, only half-awake, took his time.
"Here's your water," piped the imp rattling a large metal bucket by the bed. "Drink it up quick. Come on now, quick! Chop chop, rush rush, busy busy, quick quick, quick! We've got work to do."
Oleg finished the wheat-flakes, let forth a thunderous belch, and drank the entire bucketful of water in one swift gulp. Iktar scrambled up onto the straw mattress, and from there to the specially made pouch sewn on the back of the giant's heavy leather jerkin. Sitting or standing in the pouch, Iktar's view over Oleg's right shoulder was uninterrupted and he could easily shout instructions into the giant's ear.
"Up," said Iktar. Oleg gradually rose. As he reached his full height, more than twenty times that of the imp, he stretched his arms above his head, yawned and shook himself.
"Forward," commanded the imp, "the door is slightly to your left, and about four paces away. Walk to your left."
As the giant lumbered towards the doorway the discarded basin and bucket rattled with each heavy step.
"Stop!" shrieked the imp. "Handle and bolt are by your left hand, not right, left - right?"
Oleg reached out his hand at shoulder level, found the wall and slid his hand down to the heavy iron fittings. Effortlessly, he swung back the huge oak door.
"Two steps forward, only two, and then right. Right?"
"I've told you before Iktar, I know my way down the corridor," protested the giant, slowly emerging from the room, "I'm not totally blind. I can see my hand in front of my face and detect light and dark. And I've walked down here lots of times. Just tell me when we get to the steps."
The tower clock struck six as Oleg tramped heavily down the long, dim corridor towards the courtyard.
"I told you we'd be late," complained the imp, "I said we would. I told you so. I knew it. Three more paces to the steps, and there are eight steps remember, eight steps."
"Oh I remember alright."
"Well you didn't last week when you tripped up and almost squashed me! Do you remember that?"
"I never forget anything, Iktar, so you've no need to keep rabbiting on. I'm sorry about last week, but that wasn't my fault you know," replied Oleg good-naturedly as he felt his way downwards, "somebody must have spilt something, and I slipped on it."
The imp ignored him. "That's the last step. Two paces forward, two paces. That's far enough. Turn right, we're going to the quarry today!"
"But we only went to the quarry last week. It's cold up there. Can't we stay down here and build walls again?"
"Not today Oleg. We've run out of stone, and we'll have to cut some more. More stone is what we need."
Under Iktar's direction, Oleg stumbled forward through the portcullis and up the dusty trail towards the mountains, turning left into the quarry after a march of about six-hundred paces.
"Halt!" screamed Iktar as they reached the quarry face. "The pick is by your right foot, and the shovel behind it. Pick up the pick and shovel."
The giant reached down, seized the pick and held it up ready to strike.
"Right a little," commanded Iktar, "a little more. Right, right, right. Stop! Yes there, Hit it there, hit it."
The giant grunted as his huge muscles swung the pick, hewing enormous pieces away from the rock wall. The imp watched carefully, directing a blow here a little higher, there lower or slightly to the left or right as the giant attacked the wall.
"There's a big boulder about two leagues above us," called the imp. "It's twice the size of you, twice the size. Put down the pick and get the hammer and spike. They're behind, and slightly to the left, behind ad to the left."
The short-sighted giant placed the pickaxe down within easy reach. His left hand went in search of the huge splitting spike and hammer. Iktar guided him to the correct spot. The giant was busy driving the spike into the rock face with the mighty hammer when the avalanche struck. The boulder came loose suddenly, causing the surrounding rock to collapse and demolish half the quarry face with it. He immediately knew that the stupid, greedy imp had caused him to overreach himself. With his excellent hearing and sensitive body, compensations for his poor sight, Oleg heard and felt the boulder shift and, without waiting for directions from Iktar, instinctively jumped out of the way, only to be knocked unconscious by the corner of a descending slab. His quick reaction saved them both, but Iktar, despite escaping with a few cuts and grazes, was nevertheless annoyed, since his charge had jumped without being told to do so.

---===oooOooo===---

The soft, sweet twittering of a blackbird awoke Oleg at dawn the next morning. He lay on his bed, head wrapped in a bandage of vinegar-soaked brown paper.
"Oh noooo!" he groaned, putting a hand to the large bruise behind to his right ear, "my brain hurts! Oh my brain hurts so much!" He vaguely remembered that the lunatic, ignorant imp had almost done for them both, cursed angrily and promised himself that he would do something about it.
Slowly, he opened his eyes. "Oh noooo!" he groaned again, "even worse. Strange colours and lights, the like of which I've never seen before! Oh noooo!" He rolled over and went back to sleep.
Iktar appeared several hours later with a bowl of hot gruel. "Wake up stupid," he demanded, "wake up now. Here's some hot food for you. You need nourishment to aid your recovery, nourishment I say, wake up." He dragged the bowl to the bed, and, feeling ill at the strong smell of the vinegar, left the room through a rectangular hatch in the door base.
Oleg dozed for a while, turned over and opened his eyes. The pain wasn't so bad now. It seemed to vanish altogether when he realised he could see. Without moving his head, he rolled his eyes, looking around the room and marvelled at the beauty, the colour and the sharpness of the images before him. Hardly daring to move, since it might dispell his new found ability, he sat up carefully, ever so carefully, and gingerly surveyed his surroundings. So this was the luxurious giant's accommodation that the imp told him about so many times; this squalid tiny stone room with cobwebs in the corners, a barred window and door. He looked at the dirty water bucket in the corner, and then down at the steaming plate of vomit-like gruel. Swiftly and quietly - for his new found vision overcame his clumsiness - he sprang down and tried the door, only to discover it bolted from the outside. He climbed back onto the rough-hewn, wooden structure and straw cover that comprised his bed, and peered through the window, observing the courtyard with its heavy, iron portcullis and massive walls. Stone walls; walls he had built with his own hands. Oleg's vision was defective no more. The imp had taken advantage of him. This was no worker's luxury accommodation; it was a prison. The veil had lifted from his eyes and transfigured his entire being. By some strange quirk of fortune he could see; the gift of vision opened an entirely new dimension. Sight made him free; unconditionally free. He wondered at the squalor he had lived in, not noticing, for so many years. He thought of revenge against the imp but, despite an immediate emotional reaction of hatred, his inherent good nature forbade it. Had the imp been there at the moment of realisation, Oleg would have torn him limb from limb in anger. But he didn't bear grudges; the imp wasn't there and that was that. The giant leaned back on his bed, secure in his immense natural strength and new found vision, knowing he was a match for any individual imp, giant or imp-giant combination. The first was too small and puny, the second too short-sighted and the third insufficiently co-ordinated to do him any harm.
He heard light footsteps in the corridor and rapidly re-assumed his prostrate position on the bed, pretending to sleep. Iktar scrambled through the doorflap and approached, covering his nose with a handkerchief.
"You haven't eaten your gruel," he complained in his squeaky voice, "we can't afford to waste food you know. You have to eat your gruel. Wake up at once and get it down you. At once I say." The imp dropped the hanky and hauled himself up to pull Oleg's ear, "Come on, food, nice food for you.".
Oleg rolled over, moving deliberately and rubbing his head. For the first time in his life he observed the ugly, sharp features Iktar with unblinkered clarity. He jerked involuntarily upon looking upon the raw face of ignorance, of selfishness and greed, with its hard, tiny, malevolent eyes.
"You look strange," said the imp peering into the giant's face, "very strange indeed. That bump on your thick skull must have done more damage than I thought. Hmmm, more than I thought."
"Oh I'm not too bad," offered Oleg, feigning tiredness, "get down and I'll eat my gruel."
"Good, good. I'll be back later to see how you're getting along. Hopefully, you'll be fit for work tomorrow, fit for work, yes. A bit of a bump on the head is no reason for time off, no reason at all, not at all. I'll be back later." With that, he vanished through the hatch.
The giant laughed and ate the gruel, pretending to be half-asleep on the imp's next two visits. He sat up on the third visit, and declared he would be fit for work the following day.

---===oooOooo===---

Iktar duly arrived at dawn and scrambled through the hatch dragging a bowl of wheat-flakes. Turning, he was amazed to see the giant sat on the bed, surveying him critically with clear, hazel eyes.
"Good morning Iktar. And what shall we do today?"
"More quarry work Oleg I'm afraid, more quarry work. We need more stone to complete the castle extension, yes to complete it. Lean forward so I can get onto your back."
The giant did as asked and, as the imp scuttled up on the mattress, suddenly seized him in his huge hand, holding him at eye level. The imp almost jumped out of his skin, and wriggled wildly trying to break free. Oleg could feel his captive's tiny heart racing.
"Don't play silly games now Oleg," stuttered the imp nervously, "no silly games. Put me on your shoulder like a good chap, and we can get out into the fresh air and cut some stone. Remember how you like fresh air."
"Oh I think not, Iktar. Today I intend to build myself a castle. Over there, on the far side of the river looks like a good place to me. Would you like to help me with the surveying my little friend?"
"You'll never manage to build a castle on your own Oleg. Never manage at all. Besides, there are no materials and you live here with me in luxury, live in real luxury, so why leave?"
"I can see Iktar." Oleg grinned, and drew the struggling imp closer to his face, "I can see!"
"Impossible. Giants were never made to see. Giants were made to follow the orders of their betters - like me - not to see! Put me down at once! Do you hear! Put me down!"
"You aren't listening Iktar. I said I can see, see! Do you understand? I can see you, and I can see what you've been up to all these years, getting me to live in a prison of my own making. I can see the reality of this so-called luxury you have provided for me, whilst you have the rest of the castle for yourself. I could crush you like a gnat right now my little friend. What do you think about that? Have you got anything to say for yourself?"
Iktar struggled and squealed. Several times he tried to speak, but the words were garbled and he stuttered incomprehensibly. Oleg felt the imp's heartbeat getting even faster, and whispered softly down his ear.
"Don't be frightened little imp, I forgive you. I'm a kindly giant, remember, kindly and I like my sleep? I forgive you." Gently, he placed the unfortunate imp on the floor and released him.
Iktar felt terrified. As he looked up at the grinning giant, his hair stood on end, and his tiny, bony knees shook and visibly knocked together making a sound like a woodpecker tapping on a tree. Finally, he turned tail and scampered through the flap.
"I'll show you, you stupid, stupid giant. I'll starve you into submission!" he cried from outside the cell. "Do you hear! Starve you! I'm in charge here. You are nothing but an ignorant, blind labourer. When you are prepared to obey, I'll let you out and not before, never, never, never, never!"
The whole castle shook as Oleg laughed. Deliberately, he strode across the cell and with his bare hands wrenched the door from its hinges, crushed it into match-wood and tossed it into the corner.
"Obey, bowbey, scowby, nobey, nobey. Ha! Not any more my nasty little friend. I'm going to build a castle across the river, Iktar," he roared, his voice echoing around the courtyard. "I forgive you, but even though I forgive you, I intend having the benefit of my toil for myself. You did a little bit of work as well, so I'll repay you, fairly and in full. I'll give you a proper room, not a squalid cell like you gave me." He strolled down the corridor into the courtyard and laughed again. "If you would like somewhere to live when the winter comes, maybe you will help me to survey the new site? It will be a cold winter this year. It will be even colder for you if you don't help, because you won't have anywhere to live. It was I who cut all this stone with my own hands. It was I who sweated and suffered carrying it down from the quarry. It was I who strained and struggled to construct these walls. It's all mine Iktar, rightfully mine, and I intend to have it."
The giant deftly climbed to the top of the castle battlements, ripped a huge block off the wall and hurled it across the river where it landed with a great thump. Then another, and another.
"I forgive you Iktar," he laughed. "I forgive you. If you can forgive yourself, you'd better come out now, before this prison you had me build collapses around your pointy little head, and becomes your tomb!"
Tears ran down his face as he worked, tears of laughter and joy.
"And I'll tell you another thing. Every single thing I do from this day forth, everything, as well as being for me, will be for the benefit of something else that lives on this world. You've taught me a lesson Iktar, one I'll never forget.
I know what bondage is now.
Your gift to me, brought about by your selfishness and ignorance, was slavery. I know what it's like, and knowing so will never, ever use or subjugate another living being, ever; you have taught me compassion.
Now that I'm free, I'm going to build a magnificent bird house in my castle and give the birds food in the winter. They sing for me and bring me seeds, so I'll repay them. Likewise, the plants feed me, and I am in their debt. So I'm going to tend them, help them grow. I'll even put a mirror on my roof to shine back light at the sun. He gives me light, warmth and life and asks nothing in return. I can't do much for him except say thank you, and I will.
Even you, you guided my steps when I was blind Iktar; and taught me about servitude. For that, I am forever in your debt, and I thank you. You can live with me for ever more if you wish, for you and I are brothers, born of the same flesh and of one mind: our rightful inheritance is to live as one in joyful harmony - as it is for all creation, all of which moves cyclically in alternating peroids of activity and blissful rest and recuperation. But first you must mend you ways a little - that's all it takes, just a little, drop some of your silly habits - like jabbering on to yourself and everyone else all the time, like trying to control things instead of letting nature do as it will, and then we will all live happily ever after for I am the ocean on which you and all others exist.
Hear, and hear well, for this lesson is for you;; go to sleep now and wake up refreshed and new.

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