Dr. Jeffery Martin, The Finders Course Works, Sorry Haters |406|

nice. did you go muse 1 or 2. let us know how it works.

Muse 2. you can actually download the app for free to track your meditation (+audio backdrops to play during meditation) even without the biofeedback device. Alien Protocols was showcasing some cheaper devices that clip on your ear from HeartMath as well, so, there's something for every budget.

If people have the money for this course I'm not knocking it, I'm just going with what works for my budget.
 
I understand what you mean, but I don't think this is where jeffrey martin is coming from.

I think the enlightenment / awakening transformation he's talking about is something very specific... he's saying he's found a better more effective and efficient way through. most importantly, he's waving around a bunch of social science statistics which prove what he's saying.

Here's a gross oversimplification just to make sure we're all talking about the same thing --
1. people meditate /pray / go to church / do spiritual stuff in order to feel better (i.e. greater sense of well-being)
2. this is fundamentally an addition by subtraction process. you feel better when you take away the disturbances that make you not feel good
3. there hasn't been a lot of good science re which methods / techniques / practices are best
Alex,
Well you know him better than I do and thus may have more insight into any nuances, but I kind of disagree with you. What I hear is a smart guy who recognizes that humans have vast untapped potential and that there are ways to access at least some of those potentials, but dogma isn't the way - and accessing the potentials isn't going to get most people what they think they'll get or what they think they want.

I understand what Dr. Martin says via this analogy:

You're an aspiring guitar player. You want to be better at playing. You want to be happy playing. Not playing C&W as well as you think you should makes you unhappy (as you see it at the time). You want a solution to get you out of the talent hole you're in or off the musical plateau you're stuck on. But (and this is the important part) all you know is country & western. Your radio is stuck on C&W. Your entire CD collection is C&W. Your family and friends only listen to C&W. I mean, literally, you don't know that there is any music other than C&W. Yet you've always struggled to play C&W like the guys on the radio and CDs. You kind of can, but it's not quite right. You're not happy as a musician.

Then one day something happens. It could happen by accident or, perhaps, someone like Dr. Martin - who is a radio repairman - comes along. The dial on your radio shifts. Now you hear jazz, rock n roll, blues, classical! You are taken to other regions of the country where music stores sell CDs of all genres and there are bands playing in clubs that cover all the styles. Wow! You had no idea that such music existed. Some of those "wrong" notes you were playing? Well, they actually are right notes in one of these other styles. Your musical prowess and happiness grows as you realize that you are much more free to play and make other kinds of sounds.

Of course, to Dr. Martin's point, you may not achieve your original goal of becoming a better C&W player. If that's what you wanted and are still married to that goal, you have failed. You probably won't even be motivated to keep working on C&W.

Now the guru/salesperson, s/he wants to take you from C&W and show you sitar music and tells you that is the ultimate musical truth, but what is happening there is that you're trading one limiting musical concept for another that is equally limited and rigid.

The real "enlightenment" is coming to understand that 1. The radio dial can shift and 2. when it does shift, there you are - aspects of yourself that you never knew existed. 3. That the totality of yourself is far greater than anyone ever told you; perhaps infinite.

I think Dr. Martin gets that 100%.

So the question is, how do we make the dial shift without freaking out and destroying our lives (mind/body/soul)? - because as much as leaving the familiar, no matter how miserable, can be liberating and exhilarating, it can also be terrifying, disorienting and very lonely.

If there is a scientific way to go about creating and managing these processes, then I'm all for it. I really like Dr. Martin b/c I see him going about all of this in a methodical way.
 
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Alex,
Well you know him better than I do and thus may have more insight into any nuances, but I kind of disagree with you. What I hear is a smart guy who recognizes that humans have vast untapped potential and that there are ways to access at least some of those potentials, but dogma isn't the way - and accessing the potentials isn't going to get most people what they think they'll get or what they think they want.

I understand what Dr. Martin says via this analogy:

You're an aspiring guitar player. You want to be better at playing. You want to be happy playing. Not playing C&W as well as you think you should makes you unhappy (as you see it at the time). You want a solution to get you out of the talent hole you're in or off the musical plateau you're stuck on. But (and this is the important part) all you know is country & western. Your radio is stuck on C&W. Your entire CD collection is C&W. Your family and friends only listen to C&W. I mean, literally, you don't know that there is any music other than C&W. Yet you've always struggled to play C&W like the guys on the radio and CDs. You kind of can, but it's not quite right. You're not happy as a musician.

Then one day something happens. It could happen by accident or, perhaps, someone like Dr. Martin - who is a radio repairman - comes along. The dial on your radio shifts. Now you hear jazz, rock n roll, blues, classical! You are taken to other regions of the country where music stores sell CDs of all genres and there are bands playing in clubs that cover all the styles. Wow! You had no idea that such music existed. Some of those "wrong" notes you were playing? Well, they actually are right notes in one of these other styles. Your musical prowess and happiness grows as you realize that you are much more free to play and make other kinds of sounds.

Of course, to Dr. Martin's point, you may not achieve your original goal of becoming a better C&W player. If that's what you wanted and are still married to that goal, you have failed. You probably won't even be motivated to keep working on C&W.

Now the guru/salesperson, s/he wants to take you from C&W and show you sitar music and tells you that is the ultimate musical truth, but what is happening there is that you're trading one limiting musical concept for another that is equally limited and rigid.

The real "enlightenment" is coming to understand that 1. The radio dial can shift and 2. when it does shift, there you are - aspects of yourself that you never knew existed. 3. That the totality of yourself is far greater than anyone ever told you; perhaps infinite.

I think Dr. Martin gets that 100%.

So the question is, how do we make the dial shift without freaking out and destroying our lives (mind/body/soul)? - because as much as leaving the familiar, no matter how miserable, can be liberating and exhilarating, it can also be terrifying, disorienting and very lonely.

If there is a scientific way to go about creating and managing these processes, then I'm all for it. I really like Dr. Martin b/c I see him going about all of this in a methodical way.
I generally agree with you but I think there's an important distinction when you get into the non-dual / yogi way. I think this is about "non doing" and as much as I hate that term and all the baggage that goes with it, at the end of the day that's what I think we're talking about.

here we have a guy who's very much into "doing" both from a silicon valley marketing go-getter perspective and from a harvard social science perspective... and he's using that to look at "non-doing." . so there's this tangled web of contradictions right off the bat... so it goes :)

I'm really into this stuff right now so I may be layering my own meaning on top of this, but think I get where he's coming from.
 
Muse 2. you can actually download the app for free to track your meditation (+audio backdrops to play during meditation) even without the biofeedback device. Alien Protocols was showcasing some cheaper devices that clip on your ear from HeartMath as well, so, there's something for every budget.

If people have the money for this course I'm not knocking it, I'm just going with what works for my budget.
thx. Im gonna check it out. I'm all in regarding personal development and have been for a lot of years. couldn't possibly list all the courses and trainings but here are my most recent (last couple of yrs) goto courses:
SoundsTrue.com | Michael Singer Course | Presented by Sounds True‎
5-star-off-the-charts-great... free course is terrific, full $150 course awesome as well

Learn the Wim Hof Method | Classic 10-Week Video Course
fantastic as well... free course is great... good value in the paid version, but not over the top great. I built an ice bath in my backyard after taking the course... love/hate that 35 degree water :)
Breatheology: Optimize Your Health and Performance
love this free course as a compliment to Micky Singer's course
 
I generally agree with you but I think there's an important distinction when you get into the non-dual / yogi way. I think this is about "non doing" and as much as I hate that term and all the baggage that goes with it, at the end of the day that's what I think we're talking about.

here we have a guy who's very much into "doing" both from a silicon valley marketing go-getter perspective and from a harvard social science perspective... and he's using that to look at "non-doing." . so there's this tangled web of contradictions right off the bat... so it goes :)

I'm really into this stuff right now so I may be layering my own meaning on top of this, but think I get where he's coming from.

Alex,
I am not into "non-doing". I tried that many years ago for a period of time (a year or two?) and it got me nowhere.

What follows might sound stupid and weird but what the heck.......I like music. I like all kinds (true - not a metaphor). Among the many musicians I like for various reasons is Jimi Hendrix and, like him or not, he was most certainly an innovator. I took a large dose of magic mushrooms during the non-doing phase of my life (which was also a disillusioned phase). At the peak of the trip I started to talking to Jimi Hendrix. Now, I don't know if I was actually talking to Hendrix's spirit or an aspect of myself that I experienced as Hendrix (pun-ish reference not intended). "Hendrix" told me that my problem was I was trying "to create something out of nothing" (that's a quote I still remember). He explained that while he was original in how he played, that we all are. he didn't invent music out of thin air. He had practiced incessantly and had played in many bands and learned the styles of playing and music. He leveraged what was already done by others and then *worked* at making them his own. He said that if he had just sat there waiting for music to come to him that it never would have. Then he added that once he had opened the door through hard work the door just kept opening wider and, at a certain point, it did indeed seem as if it was all just coming to him. "The Lord helps those who help themselves".

That trip and convo changed my life. Permanently (or at least for the past 30 years). I was done with non-doing after that. It meant something to me, albeit probably sounds retarded to anyone reading this. So I, personally, don't get non-doing and I was unhappy and unfruitful when engaged in it. I just didn't shine. Maybe it works for others?

I think related to this is that most "spiritual" people I talk to or read about think that the ego is a bad thing. IMO, it is a cluttered, ignorant, malfunctioning ego that is bad. A clean, aware, flexible ego is the rider of the horse (horse = the totality of one's being). IMO, life is about developing the rider and then riding...not killing the rider. Some lazy people who dislike themselves just want to dissolve the ego rather than do the work. It's a form of suicide.
 
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New age movement is a crock of turd. It's turned the occult SCIENCES into a bunch of love and light gibberish while ignoring or suppressing the bigger picture. They took the actual science out of it and reduced it to a 30 minute Disney show. Calling themselves lightworkers and indigo children etc
 
His anecdote about people going to Buddhism for the methodology rather than the mythology made me chuckle because I was thinking about Christians going to Christianity for the high horse/judgment official badge of authority and yet picking and choosing the mythology and belief structures they want to nibble on rather than taking the whole buffet.
 
I think related to this is that most "spiritual" people I talk to or read about think that the ego is a bad thing. IMO, it is a cluttered, ignorant, malfunctioning ego that is bad. A clean, aware, flexible ego is the rider of the horse (horse = the totality of one's being). IMO, life is about developing the rider and then riding...not killing the rider. Some lazy people who dislike themselves just want to dissolve the ego rather than do the work. It's a form of suicide.

It's an interesting analogy, the one about the horse, and I have read something similar before. I seem to recall it being about a charioteer driving horses -- the former being analogous to the higher self and the latter, the lower self or ego. To get somewhere, ideally the charioteer has to guide the horses, and without them it's more difficult to get there. Maybe abandoning the horses and "walking" would be analogous to "not doing" and wouldn't be a way that suits you, though it might suit some, I suppose -- maybe the advaitists?

Many of us wander about with our "horses" aimlessly chewing vegetation because the "charioteer" isn't in charge and needs to establish/re-establish control, hence having a better chance of getting to the destination. An effective human being, in other words, would have a properly functional ego that is subservient to his/her higher self.
 
Alex,
I am not into "non-doing". I tried that many years ago for a period of time (a year or two?) and it got me nowhere.

What follows might sound stupid and weird but what the heck.......I like music. I like all kinds (true - not a metaphor). Among the many musicians I like for various reasons is Jimi Hendrix and, like him or not, he was most certainly an innovator. I took a large dose of magic mushrooms during the non-doing phase of my life (which was also a disillusioned phase). At the peak of the trip I started to talking to Jimi Hendrix. Now, I don't know if I was actually talking to Hendrix's spirit or an aspect of myself that I experienced as Hendrix (pun-ish reference not intended). "Hendrix" told me that my problem was I was trying "to create something out of nothing" (that's a quote I still remember). He explained that while he was original in how he played, that we all are. he didn't invent music out of thin air. He had practiced incessantly and had played in many bands and learned the styles of playing and music. He leveraged what was already done by others and then *worked* at making them his own. He said that if he had just sat there waiting for music to come to him that it never would have. Then he added that once he had opened the door through hard work the door just kept opening wider and, at a certain point, it did indeed seem as if it was all just coming to him. "The Lord helps those who help themselves".

That trip and convo changed my life. Permanently (or at least for the past 30 years). I was done with non-doing after that. It meant something to me, albeit probably sounds retarded to anyone reading this. So I, personally, don't get non-doing and I was unhappy and unfruitful when engaged in it. I just didn't shine. Maybe it works for others?

I think related to this is that most "spiritual" people I talk to or read about think that the ego is a bad thing. IMO, it is a cluttered, ignorant, malfunctioning ego that is bad. A clean, aware, flexible ego is the rider of the horse (horse = the totality of one's being). IMO, life is about developing the rider and then riding...not killing the rider. Some lazy people who dislike themselves just want to dissolve the ego rather than do the work. It's a form of suicide.
right. totally get it. and that's the part that I find so interesting about jeffery martin's presentation I hear him saying "I don't give a f*** what anyone thinks about 'non-doing' or 'non-dual', or any other name you want to give to what you do, I'm going to measure you according to the best tools we have... and you may argue with these tools are crap, but that's what we're relying on right now within psychology... then I'm going to show you I can make the needle move regard to well-being."
 
right. totally get it. and that's the part that I find so interesting about jeffery martin's presentation I hear him saying "I don't give a f*** what anyone thinks about 'non-doing' or 'non-dual', or any other name you want to give to what you do, I'm going to measure you according to the best tools we have... and you may argue with these tools are crap, but that's what we're relying on right now within psychology... then I'm going to show you I can make the needle move regard to well-being."

:) Dr. Martin has learned the hard lesson of the creative/effective mind and the critiquer. Talent makes insecure/dark-hearted people jealous. Success makes them furious. One of life's key lessons in fundamental well being. Ignore them.
 
:) Dr. Martin has learned the hard lesson of the creative/effective mind and the critiquer. Talent makes insecure/dark-hearted people jealous. Success makes them furious. One of life's key lessons in fundamental well being. Ignore them.
I wrestled with this issue when preparing this episode... there's a lot of negative stuff out there regarding jeffery and the finders course, but the one thing I found compelling was his willingness to share and his outreach to various communities. he's done the exact opposite of "I'm going to sue you for using my proprietary method" thing. this goes a long way with me.
 
I wrestled with this issue when preparing this episode... there's a lot of negative stuff out there regarding jeffery and the finders course, but the one thing I found compelling was his willingness to share and his outreach to various communities. he's done the exact opposite of "I'm going to sue you for using my proprietary method" thing. this goes a long way with me.

He is building brand. Brand strength, nurture and protection is supreme over every other business goal - even the recovery of cash.
 
Alex,

Could you post the links to the controlled, double blind, peer reviewed and replicated studies published in reputable scientific journals, or any published scientific studies, that show the Finder's Course works? That would be the best way to disarm the haters who doubt claims of scientific evidence for a phenomenon.

Thanks
 
In case anyone is interested, I have written instructions on my preferred type of meditation here.
https://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/meditation-1#meditation_serenity

You can read about the complete system for free.

My philosophical approach is similar to those Buddhists who translate "suffering" as "stress". In my approach, learning to strengthen the para-sympathetic nervous system leads to the reduction of "suffering" (stress). The ultimate goal (though I don't claim it is attainable) is to be able to be relaxed in any situation. It is a life long path. If you don't like sitting meditation you can do tai-chi, qigong, yoga, or relaxation exercises. It has nothing to do with non-symbolic consciousness so it does not conflict with Dr. Martin's work or any systems of non-duality. It is in a different category so you can do both types of practices you want.

I also subscribe to the view that Buddha did not teach non-duality.

I have not had any problems with haters.
 
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I found this interview very interesting and was particularly struck by his enthusiasm about a book that contributed to his research about language and how much meaning had changed in just 100 years. He was kind enough to provide a link to the work on YT when I requested it! He even made me feel (for about 5 minutes) that the technology could be really good for us in finding well-being. :)

In case anyone else would like to check it out:
https://www.amazon.com/Each-Mind-Kingdom-American-1875-1920-ebook/dp/B003XQG6HY

I’ll be getting his book as well, but not b/c I’m excited about the uplifting potential of Big Data, but b/c he seems to me like a man of sincerity and integrity who truly means well.
 
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