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Command Z Presents:
Command Z
Vs.
The Brain
By Riley Holland and Garrett Daun
© 2012
Command Z
http://radicalundoing.com
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The Cult of the Brain
Every person possesses a brain, about three pounds of goo containing
roughly 100 billion neurons, inside a skull thick enough to protect it.
Some skulls are thicker than others.
No matter how “intelligent” any one of us is, though, we have to face the
fact that everything we experience, we experience through the medium of
this three pounds of goo.
All our perceptions, thoughts, emotions, memories—they all come from
goo.
Sure, they may correspond to a world “out there” somewhere, but we never
experience that world except through the brain’s translation of it.
In this report, we’ll be presenting a brief picture of the good, the bad, and
the ugly that goes along with having a brain.
You won’t find what follows in any so-called self-improvement programs, in
the New Age, or in religion, except possibly in a highly diluted form.
Those systems aren’t about the truth. They’re not scientific. They’re
industries geared toward putting you sound asleep and letting you dream
sweet dreams while they pull dollars out of your pocket.
One way they put you to sleep is by overwhelming you with information. As
any good hypnotherapist (or politician) knows, a person goes into a trance
by being overwhelmed with input. They retreat from overstimulation into a
pleasant waking sleep.
We’re not going to do that. We’re going to keep it simple.
© 2012
Command Z
http://radicalundoing.com
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Evolving All Over Again
The human organism, in particular the human brain, is a nightmare of poor
design. I know you’ve been taught all your life how wonderful the human
race is, how amazing our brains are. In a way, that’s true.
However, they also contain serious flaws. And I don’t know if you’ve tuned
in to the Nature channel lately, but being the most intelligent species on
this planet isn’t exactly much of a distinction.
That’s the bad news. The good news is, the evolutionary process is at work
in us right now, and if you choose, you can actively participate in it. That’s
one thing the Command Z techniques accomplish.
Speaking of evolution, have you ever heard the phrase, “ontogeny
recapitulates phylogeny?” It’s basically a fancy way of saying each one of us,
starting in the womb, goes through the whole story of evolution, stage by
stage. For a while we have gills and webbed feet before we have hands. We
grow out of those, but the older forms of life live on in our brains. The story
of life’s evolution on Earth is your story. It’s you. It’s what you’re living as
you read this email.
(If you are getting uncomfortable with this model because you think God
created humans out of the sprinkles in his beard, please stop reading
now.)
© 2012
Command Z
http://radicalundoing.com
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The Reptilian Overlord Within
To put this in perspective, let’s look at the oldest, simplest piece of
hardware we have in our brains. We’ll call it the reptile brain, since reptiles
have it too, and since it’s a fully functional brain in itself.
Over the course of evolution, reptiles spent a long time doing very few
things. They ate, they fought each other, they ran away from threats, and
they made sweet, tender reptile love. That’s it. That’s all their brains had to
manage to keep the ball rolling.
When more complex life forms evolved from reptiles, that old reptile brain
never went away. All the other parts of the brain just plopped on top. If you
think about it, that makes sense: in case the new brain innovations didn’t
work out, the tried and true reptile model would need to be there to fall
back on.
Even now, the reptile part of our brain plays a huge role in regulating our
lives.
Take, for example, a day in the life of Dick, a typical citizen of the Planet
Earth.
Dick wakes up with a jolt to the blaring sounds of his alarm clock. He finds
the only way to reliably disrupt the natural flow of his reptilian regulated
sleep cycle is to simulate a reptilian danger signal—an ALARM!
Although the sound isn’t prelude to a genuine survival threat, like a lion or
an avalanche, it does bring with it an onrush of survival anxieties: Dick has
to get up now so he can be at his job on time. If he doesn’t, he might get
fired, run out of money, starve, and die.
Of course, being late wouldn’t really kill him, but the chain of thoughts
from “I can’t be late!” to “because I might die!” takes place so quickly and
automatically, the resulting survival anxiety gives him the rush necessary to
get out of bed.
After getting up Dick goes through what he calls his “morning ritual.” The
sameness of his mornings helps focus the reptilian anxiety, and comforts
him with a sense of business as usual. He keeps the survival rush going with
© 2012
Command Z
http://radicalundoing.com
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a cup of coffee, a liquid plant-derived drug that stimulates the fight/flight
survival response.
He satisfies his reptilian hunger, mitigated by the appetite impairing
adrenaline rush from the coffee, with some toast. He complements it with a
glass of orange juice, since at some point someone told him he needed to be
“healthy” or he might develop some sort of cancer or something.
All this survival anxiety keeps Dick’s body in a chronic state of tension and
shallow breathing, leading to numerous chronic health and emotional
problems. But it’s been going on so long, he doesn’t even notice it anymore.
Dick dresses in his suit, a uniform he uses to make him feel comfortably
anonymous, one of the crowd. He gets in his car and drives to work—a
highly complex operation that by now has become total reptilian habit. He
barely even registered the drive over.
On his way into the office, Dick passes his boss, and automatically lowers
his gaze out of fearful deference to what he acknowledges to be a more
powerful creature. He represses his anger at his feeling of helplessness and
comforts himself with the thought that the boss is really just an asshole,
and the conviction that he, one day, will be as wealthy and powerful as him.
He’s relieved to get to his desk—a familiar, safe place, that reminds him of
all the other, similar desks he’s sat at through his years of ritualized
learning in elementary school, middle school, high school, and college. He
gets to work on whatever the hell he does all day, operating more or less on
autopilot. He tries not to get up too often to piss or get coffee, but takes lots
of private breaks at his computer, sliding into neutral and putting himself
in a sleepy reptilian trance.
Eventually his appetite kicks in and he goes to lunch with his coworkers.
While they eat, they gossip about their fellow employees, which makes
them feel more relaxed and secure about their own fears of being thrown
out of the group. They vie for position by impressing one another with their
knowledge about things like sex, cars and exercise. Their talking makes
them feel relaxed and powerful for a while before walking back into the
office, seeing the boss, and dispersing to their safe spaces.
© 2012
Command Z
http://radicalundoing.com
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By the end of the workday, Dick is exhausted. He drives home through rush
hour traffic half asleep, fantasizing about dinner. He picks up a pizza and
drinks some beer. The alcohol and rush of blood to his bloated stomach
deaden his anxiety enough that he almost feels relaxed.
While he eats and drinks, Dick watches the news on TV. The bright flashing
lights put him in a pleasant trance state, like an iguana on a sunny rock.
The tragic stories on the news further calm his anxieties. He finds comfort
in the knowledge that terrible things are happening to other people, not to
him. He stares at the female newscaster’s breasts, which cast a warm glow
of sexual attraction over him as he listens to her report on a recent double
murder.
Eventually, Dick’s TV trance drifts into sleep, his body automatically
switching gears in order to rest and recuperate as much as possible before
another alarm jolts him into the survival struggle once again.
Dick is ruled by the habits, compulsions and fears of the reptile brain. It
was Dick versus the brain, and Dick lost before he ever knew a battle was
raging.
But remember, the reptile brain is not always the enemy. It does serve some
important functions. It regulates all those survival processes constantly
humming in our guts and hearts that keep us alive. It only becomes a
problem when it starts running our lives and overriding our intentions.
Of course, the reptile brain isn’t the only influence pulling our strings. Next
up in the evolutionary cycle is the mammal brain, or limbic system.
© 2012
Command Z
http://radicalundoing.com
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limbic system (noun)
a complex system of nerves and networks in the brain, involving several
areas near the edge of the cortex concerned with instinct and mood. It
controls the basic emotions (fear, pleasure, anger) and drives (hunger,
sex, dominance, care of offspring).
How are you feeling right now? Your emotions color and affect how you
take in new information. It might be handy for you to stretch your face and
do some of the shoulder exercises before reading further….
In the battle of the self vs. the brain, emotions are bound to become an
issue sooner or later. If you’re like every other human alive, chances are,
emotions have already gotten between you and what you really want. The
problem is, emotions feel so real that they can take over your mind in an
instant, with barely any warning or opportunity to do anything about their
interference.
Let’s explore this aspect of the battle a little more.
In every situation, you have an almost unlimited range of possible actions.
That means infinite possibilities. However, once overwhelmed with
sadness, anger, or fear, the conscious mind gets constricted. That means
you can only see one or two possibilities, instead of the always-open-ended
future sitting before you.
Another way emotions work against you is by convincing you that there’s a
good reason for them, and someone or something must take the blame. You
might be feeling sad or angry about something, but have no idea why.
Emotions arise from the limbic system irrationally. For example, you might
have seen a certain shade of red when you were a young child getting yelled
at by your mother. Then, years later, that same shade of red appears in the
background, and you start feeling sad.
Then, instead of recognizing what’s happening as a bodily experience that
you can let pass or even learn from, your mind starts looking for reasons
why you’re sad. The emotion latches onto the easiest target, and before you
know it, you’re sad about your relationship, or something a friend said to
you earlier that day.
© 2012
Command Z
http://radicalundoing.com
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The limbic system uses emotional chemicals to get us to reevaluate and
interpret our experiences and make sense of them. The only thing is, most
of the time, the emotions were triggered by something that doesn’t make
sense at all.
Have you ever acted out when you felt angry, and then later realized that
what you were angry about never really happened? It happens all the time.
You can see a crude example of this in people on the street who get mad at
someone looking at them. “What’re you lookin’ at?!” Our minds project our
emotions at whatever targets happen to be present.
As you work your way through this PDF, you might start to notice that no
external object or person is truly responsible for how you feel. Most of the
time, you’re not even technically responsible for it. The limbic system just
serves up emotions based on past experiences and often erroneous
associations based on the wide range of available data.
The crazy thing is that there is always so much data available, our brains
have to edit out 99% of it for us to even function. What that means for you
is that there is enough data present to prove anything to yourself about any
given situation. To put it another way, there is always an opportunity to
get more of what you want,,,in every situation.
The trick is to stop identifying with your emotions.
When an emotion runs rampant, a chemical reaction takes place in the
brain that makes the body feel whatever emotion is present. If you can
remember that you’re having a bodily experience—that doesn’t inherently
mean anything—you’re off to a great start.
The next step toward handling your emotions, instead of them handling
you, is to identify what’s going on. Put your mind on your body and feel
everything. Ask yourself, What am I willing to do to make myself feel
better?
You have an answer in the exercises from the email series.
Keep in mind that the exercises will work to make your emotions both more
intense—meaning you feel them more fully--and easier to handle. The more
© 2012
Command Z
http://radicalundoing.com
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deeply you feel your emotional reactions in your body, the faster the
chemicals will dissipate so you can get back to normal functioning.
Remember that it takes time—often about 20 minutes—for an emotional
charge to dissipate. That is, unless you keep identifying with the emotion,
looking for someone or something to blame for it, and never fully feeling it
and letting it go.
You can run yourself through a short series of the Command Z exercises
in various emotional states to explore the effects for yourself.
It goes like this:
1. Face stretching. Do it just like in the video. Make sure you move slowly
and add lots of tension. Do it for at least 5 minutes.
2. Shoulders to ears. Again, just like in the video, for at least 1 minute,
more time if possible.
3. The flop. Follow the video. Learn to let go, and try to let go of your
attachment to whatever emotion you’re feeling while you do the exercise.
The real magic happens when you decide to do something about how you
feel, instead of finding external sources to blame. You’re never a victim of
life….
A moment of choice always appears just before you get fully overwhelmed
with emotions. Have you ever noticed yourself starting to get angry, and
then decided not to?
We’re not talking about suppression or denial of your feelings. Instead, you
can let the experience wash over you, without having to assign any meaning
or importance to it. Then, your emotions take their rightful place as
contextual events in your body.
The first step is to get in touch with your emotions. To do that, you need
awareness, persistence, and determination.
© 2012
Command Z
http://radicalundoing.com
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Not only will your newly sharpened awareness give you an edge over
difficult emotional experiences;;; it will also be very useful when we reach
the next level of abstraction and interpretation::: The Neocortex.
© 2012
Command Z
http://radicalundoing.com
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Neocortex (noun)
a part of the cerebral cortex concerned with sight and hearing in
mammals, regarded as the most recently evolved part of the cortex.
So far, you’ve discovered how different parts of the brain are constantly
working either for, or, more often, against your best intentions. The reptile
brain works to keep your heart beating, lungs breathing and everything
functioning somewhat smoothly, but it also has many irrational reactions to
stimuli that were once important for survival, but no longer serve us.
The limbic system, or emotional part of the brain, works to create
emotional experiences, as well as drives such as hunger and sexuality. It
also convinces us that we are victims of our own experience, and that what
we are feeling must have a rational explanation. But, as you’ve probably
experienced yourself, there is no way to out-think or reason with an
emotion. They just don’t work like that.
The next part of the brain, the neocortex, appears to have been designed to
mitigate the limitations of the other brain parts. It allows us to set
intentions, make plans, think, write, and strategize, despite fear or emotion.
However, more brain fibers travel from the reptile brain to the neocortex
than travel from the neocortex to the reptile brain.
That means the reptile brain and limbic system always have more power
over the neocortex than vice versa. The best laid plans and intentions are
often thwarted by your own brain structure.
Remember, as evolution progresses, the older, tried and true structures
have seniority, in case the new ones don’t work out.
That’s why you find yourself eating an ice cream cone hours after starting a
new diet.
But don’t worry. Command Z lets you eat ice cream cones all the time.
Despite its apparent benefits, the neocortex has its own arsenal to keep you
on autopilot and living your life half-asleep. The trouble with the neocortex
is that it has you fully convinced that everything you think of as reality is
really real.
© 2012
Command Z
http://radicalundoing.com
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A short experiment will help you prove to yourself that what you think of as
reality has no basis in the realm of actual experience.
Look around the room you find your body sitting in right now.
You'll find it nearly impossible to stop your mind from labeling everything
you see.
As you look around the room, notice how your mind automatically puts
labels on everything.
As if you really know the essence of anything because you learned a name
for it!
We do it to objects, sounds, scents, other people, and even ourselves.
The mind constantly vomits up words and paints them all over everything,
until we live in a land of words, instead of in the realm of bodily experience.
Your mind is filled to overflowing with words and interpretations. Not only
that, but your mind is fully convinced that the words really are the things
that they attempt to describe.
You can try the experiment with all of your senses. When you hear
something, notice how your mind immediately describes and gives you an
explanation for it. Why is an explanation necessary?
The neocortex is focused on managing and processing the data you take in
primarily through your eyes and ears. It builds a picture and gives you an
explanation for everything you experience through those senses.
The main weapon the neocortex has against you is the creation and
assignment of meaning to the data you take in. While the reptile brain
registers an increase in temperature and moves toward the heat source, the
emotional brain feels pleasure and delight. The neocortex turns these
feelings into a metaphysical judgment, such as “good.”
There is no such thing as good or evil out there in reality. They are
judgments and explanations the neocortex uses to help us make sense of
what we experience.
© 2012
Command Z
http://radicalundoing.com
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It also has us completely convinced that the words, labels, and definitions
we use are real and truthful, which they aren’t.
Look at a map of your favorite outdoor location. The map doesn’t contain
any of your experiences in that spot. It’s just a marker; a tool for navigation,
nothing more. The same goes for words, thoughts, emotions, and urges.
They are simply indicators, but they aren’t reality.
What's the problem with that? It might seem like no big deal, but do you
remember what it felt like to have experiences beyond words? Do you
remember what everything looked and sounded like before you slapped
your labels on them and then forgot to pay attention?
The vomit-paint of words coats everything and helps put us to sleep to
what's really going on. Words are loaded with meanings and emotional
interpretations. These meanings trigger responses in our brains and bodies
that keep us locked in a land of make-believe.
Sometimes you hear about people who get hit hard on the head, or get in a
devastating car accident, or have a near-death experience. They come out of
it with a whole new view of their lives....sometimes. And sometimes this
new state lasts. Most times, however, it fades back out of awareness. These
people have seen beyond the vomit-paint of words, and they know that they
really never knew anything outside of contextual facts and knowledge;
nothing about themselves or their place in life.
Once you catch a glimpse beyond all the vomit and meaning, your life
becomes something more than just living up to labels and roles. You'll know
that you have never really been a PhD, an office worker, a vice president, a
store clerk, or a Garbage Man.
You've just been alive. Doing things. Experiencing life. And the mystery of it
never really went away. You just learned to label everything and fall asleep
to the majesty of it all.
Look at the endless sky. Stare out at the vast ocean. Let your mind expand
beyond the vomitus you've slathered all over everything. Listen without
volition. Taste everything as though you've never tasted before....because
you haven't. Your word-vomit just convinces you otherwise.
© 2012
Command Z
http://radicalundoing.com
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Every kiss is something new.
Every sound can be a beautiful mystery.
Every touch is radiant and electric.
Have you already forgotten again?
There are ways to remember.
© 2012
Command Z
http://radicalundoing.com
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So, It’s All in My…Head?
By now you’ve probably recognized some chilling consequences about this
whole brain situation that you may not have realized before.
The whole brain issue hit home for me when I realized this insane-sounding
fact:
Nothing tastes like anything.
No single food you've ever eaten actually has a flavor.
Think back to the most delicious, decadent, sensuous feast you ever ate. All
those flavors you recall? None of them was real.
Do you know why flavor seems to exist? Do you know why that meal
“tasted” so damn good? Because without the illusion of flavor, you'd be
dead.
Flavor is invented by your brain. It's an illusion evolved over millennia of
trial and error and associated with foods that your brain decided were good
for your survival. The only reason twigs don't taste like Kobe steak is that
the people who only ate twigs died.
Every time you bite into your favorite dive bar's onion rings, your brain is
inventing the flavor. But as we noted earlier, your brain is...kinda dumb. It
doesn't evolve very quickly, and when it does, it doesn't update the old
hardware. The brain that drove paleolithic hunters to develop tools and
brave the predator-rich terrain of prehistory is the same brain that drives
the family minivan to McDonald's for happy meals.
The same is true for all your other senses, and it's true for the world that
those senses create. You live in a virtual reality generated by a brain
designed to survive on the African Savannah. Nothing is what it seems, and
nothing is for certain.
At this point, I’m going to give you a few minutes to figure out the catch in
all this.
© 2012
Command Z
http://radicalundoing.com
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So far we’ve said that everything you’ve experienced has been generated by
your own brain.
That includes taste, touch, smell, sight, sound. It includes your most
treasured memories and your most poignant emotions. It includes all the
people you’ve met and all the deeds you’ve done.
It’s all in your head.
So what’s the catch?
Think about it…
Okay, here’s the answer:
“All of it,” the “all of it” that’s in the brain, includes the brain.
That’s right. Even your own brain—the idea of it, the pictures of brains
you’ve seen, the actual brain matter you may have gotten to peak at in a jar,
this report—yeah, that’s all in your brain, too.
If you’re saying to yourself, “Huh?” you’re probably on the right track.
If the brain is in the brain, we can’t really say that the brain is the cause of
experience. The brain is just another content of experience.
In this light, scientific materialism--the idea that physical matter is the only
fundamental reality--turns out to be just one more belief system. Upon
closer examination, it doesn’t really explain anything.
And that’s how you beat the brain.
But that still leaves us with the basic question, where is all this experience
coming from? What the hell is going on here?
We don’t know. All we have is the raw data.
Maybe now you see why most people would rather live in a word-generated
fantasy land than deal with the raw data. The raw data is chaotic, primal,
ambiguous, thrilling, exhilarating, alive. It breaks down the barriers
© 2012
Command Z
http://radicalundoing.com
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between you and the world around you. It's not for the meek or the rigid. It
lives.
And the raw data is where you have to go if you want to change.
Not stories about world history, the “economy,” sub-atomic particles,
heavenly fathers, or scientific theories.
The raw data.
As coach D'Amato said, “That's what living is: The six inches in front of
your face.”
Take a look. What's in front of your face right now? What's actually
surrounding you in your physical environment? What's going on within
you?
Stop reading for a moment and look around.
Now, I don't know what's actually going on around you, but I'll bet it’s not
war, famine, crime, or your greatest fear.
Yet turn on the news and guess what they'll be telling you is going on, as
they hurl forth their word-vomit drunkenly into your lap?
Of course, it's not just the news; that's just our modern era's secular church
of terror. It's anyone who tells you what's going on instead of asking you,
What's going on? And in case you haven't noticed, the institutions that dole
out “answers” to life's questions and tell you how to live have nothing to
offer you.
Maybe the raw data will sneak up on you before you know it.
So again, we ask you, What the hell is going on here? What's going on in
those six inches in front of your face? Because if you want to rise out of the
trance your brain has caught you in and choose a life you can live with,
that's the arena, that's the battlefield. Not the stories you tell yourself, not
the stories we tell you, but the raw data.
So, what are you going to do?
© 2012
Command Z
http://radicalundoing.com
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Command Z Sessions
Get a killer deal on a 5 pack of sessions. Enter “5” in the quantity, press
return, then use the code: 5pack to claim your package at 80% off)
Command Z: Radical Undoing 101
Undoing 101 is our breakthrough course to help you change your brain and
change your life.
If there’s anything we can do to assist you, get in touch:
[email protected]
© 2012
Command Z
http://radicalundoing.com