Saturday, 31 March 2018

"Those who believed that money and control were the most important thing, have no heart platform to stand on as the timelines shift. They feel they are losing everything by losing their material belongings, social status, financial status, or belief systems about how this was going to unfold. They are afraid of exposure and judgment. These HUmans have a deep ties energetically to nearly everyone on the planet. The core-shaking loss that they feel as the New Light takes over the plan is palpable." Sandra Walter




Crossing the Crystalline Bridges: Part One

 Mar 29, 2018

Blessings Beloved Light Tribe ~
Obviously it has been an intense few weeks as this next light level flows in. This series of intel addresses the mulitidimensional levels of what is unfolding for the Ascension in this now. I AM about to travel to Sedona for High-Vibe gatherings, which feels well-timed as April provides unique interaction with the crystalline bridges to the New Earth experience. Kindwhile, this series of articles may provide clarity and support.
We are experiencing major releases of plasma light pulses. Ancient codes are stepping forth for higher timelines. Unlock what you planted here for Ascension, beloveds. The Crystalline Grid is adjusting the New Earth Grids for stability; Intend flow, ease and grace.
Meditate to feel the bliss, expansion and soothe the clearing activity. Focus on the heart as the energy field stimulation is very strong, especially for embodiers of the Christed frequency. The whole-body vibrations and surges will continue to amplify. Shake it til you make it!
Your lightbody is changing right now, don’t let the mind distract from this sacred transformation. Deep Soul group activity also present; we are migrating realities as a collective.
Note the activated heart torus expansion – like a big balloon of light. Spin crystalline-diamond-Christed light through these fields, it truly supports balance and integration. Extra water and oxygenation; we are purging the uncomplimentary DNA patterns and imprints from the cells. Release, weep, smile, we got this. It is safe to change.
This initial thrust of the Equinox wave lasts through April 7. Keep the focus on Highest Primary timelines for all. Join the SUNday Unity Meditations for collective amplification, balance and healing. Full Moon unified Gatekeeping and Gridwork this Saturday, March 31 at 5:37AM PT.
Crossing the Crystalline Bridges: Part One
Geomagentic storms were strong during the initial blows of these Cosmic Winds. Solar wind (plasma influxes) are consistent; a stream of higher vibrational Source-light-encoded light. Alignments during this passage assist the ever-increasing influx of these plasma delivery systems. This phase is different, however. Energies always rise and grow stronger, that is the shift itself. This new frequency is revealing higher trajectories for many, which in turn levels up the collective Ascension.
As the planetary magnetics shift, it opens Gateways – ancient Gateways – for activation of Gaia’s crystalline core to radiate 5D activations. It also triggers awakened DNA and lightbodies to go into Ascension mode. This is why the body, mind, and emotions are so stimulated right now. This is the new light level consistently blooming, expanding us into the next creation which is already in place. New Earth Now.
This Divine Will influx is significantly altering the magnetics and grids of Gaia. Note the consistent solar wind and geomagnetic storms all throughout the Equinox influx from March 15. This is strong energy, powerful dimensional-shifting, consciousness-raising light. On the evening of March 16th I experienced six hours of watching the lightwave come nearer, activating extremely pure planetary and star toroidal fields in nearby systems. There were also vast fields of sparkling 5D-rainbow plasma flowing with this activity. More on that in the next article.
These pure phototonic deliveries are unlocking the magnetic stronghold which held old systems in place. As above, so below, Beloveds. Old game over, both externally and internally. This is why your lifestream is demanding change on a personal level. This is why you cannot create with the old energy, or why it feels uncomfortable to do so. Our higher trajectory, Primary Christed timelines, are doing what was intended; empowering the creators and active participants of this experience to raise all willing hearts into Unity consciousness.
Deconstructing the Old Architecture, the Old Storyline.
Think Universal, act local. The collective demands change on all levels. This is a reciprocal effect; the energies coming in create change, the Divine return of a pure experience of Source. Ascension is a command from Source; our entire Universe is shifting. The collective responds to the triggering light by seeking truth.
This has been going on for decades; the revelation of that which was hidden. The intensity increases; more light provides more exposure. As distortions, time-loops, uncomplimentary timelines and holographic inserts/imprints are removed, the collective consciousness catches up to the true level of light; the Divine Truth. Revelation begins to accelerate, the energies amplify, and our body-mind-spirit complex adjusts.
Part of the Gatekeeper credo is ensuring that everyone is provided with the opportunity to explore their Ascension without boundaries or control systems interfering with their path. This is what is occurring right now with Ascension. Everything is being cleared so that the collective experience of Ascension is wide open for exploration by all.
Anxieties and Insecurities
This current energy is aimed at global, palpable awakening and transparency. Insecurities, lack of confidence, emotional deep purging may get intense right now. Yes, it is part of the process and DNA/lightbody upgrades. However you may have noticed that it feels different, almost too intense in some moments. This is happening at the same time that many of us are experiencing intense bliss. Global magnetic shifts also alter your personal magnetics, however there is more going on.
As we move into unity consciousness, we can feel the collective field. Much of the insecurity, egoic clearing, and confidence challenges are a reflection of what is occurring behind the scenes. Those who believed that money and control were the most important thing, have no heart platform to stand on as the timelines shift. They feel they are losing everything by losing their material belongings, social status, financial status, or belief systems about how this was going to unfold. They are afraid of exposure and judgment. These HUmans have a deep ties energetically to nearly everyone on the planet. The core-shaking loss that they feel as the New Light takes over the plan is palpable.
We have experienced loss, reevaluation of all that we are, and the release of egoic-level attachments through our Ascension process. That same process is available to those who have chosen lower timelines. However, when it hits the powers-that-were in such a strong way, there are collective reverberations of those emotions and constructs being released. Those who are completely enamored and entangled with control-as-power, manipulation-as-power, are suffering. We must remember this is a collective release of what was created here, on overdrive.
There is much deep soul-searching as old structures collapse. However here is the point of mentioning behind the scenes in this article: Because we are all One, because the energy is doing the exact same thing to our personal lives that it is doing to the old structures, and because those systems had energetic ties to the entire collective, we feel it removing the old foundational platforms based on control, ego, and survival. This effects us on an individual case-by-case, person by person level. Clemency, forgiveness, emotional and psychological breakdowns from those transparency operations are palpable.
The energy does the same thing to our journeys as it does to larger operating systems. The questioning, the doubts, the fears, the insecurity, the lack of confidence … You see that this is all a reflection of what is happening on a mass scale. When folks at the top feel wounded and insecure, we feel it too. It teaches us empathy and compassion. In order to fully become a Christed being, we demonstrate non-judgment and forgiveness. False confidence or a false sense of power are falling away. This allows us to re-examine everything in this new light. Constructing new realities as we de-construct old ones is a mighty task for the lower Self. Have patience, follow the flow of this new light and let it change you.
Addiction to the old reality is breaking apart. Mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual distortion is surrendered so the palpable experience of a new path may be attained.
Spiritual Maturity, Spiritual Disclosure
The challenges to our spiritual maturity, our hearts, our relationships, releases the magnetics of the past. If you feel un-glued, that is exactly what is happening in your fields (and Gaia’s). Yes, the filters for our Ascension get finer and finer as we go through this process. That has been consistent. However this year, when we’re dealing with larger numbers in the awakened collective, the experience dissolves storylines and beliefs about who we were, and how we were going to walk through this.
This is a beautiful Mastery initiation to infinite possibility. We place our hearts on the feather scale. What has been learned and did we apply it properly? Is there anything that needs to shift to accommodate the higher trajectory?
We keep refining what we are in order to merge with our Higher True Self. Those of us feeling and creating this pull to the higher level, must respect and honor it. The High-Vibe Tribe reaches out multidimensionally to create highest outcomes for all.
Relationship with Source: Apply Multidimensional Awareness to Everything
Our relationship with Source is tested. Relationship issues are a reflection of the relationship with Self, which is a relationship with Source. The Divine searches for its own reflection, amplifies the Sacred mirrors and corrects distortion.
As this pure Source light returns, we deeply honor our relationship with Source. We feel and honor our relationship with creation, everything as God, as Self. Our relationship to Source is completing and aligning relationships in form because the Higher Self relationship is purifying with Source.
We are learning during this bifurcation process how realities are separated, and how they arise into something else. We remember our ancient creation, and how to create again in alignment with Source. We are reaching for the highest truth, the highest expression. Anything which limits the full expression of your highest trajectory is exposed.
Focus on multidimensional awareness and apply it to everything that is presenting in your lifestream. All situations, interactions, emotions, behaviors, words, projects, and creations. This is the emergence of our consistent presence as one unified consciousness. Everything traverses dimensions; apply this knowledge directly to what is presenting.
The new light level can be intense in some moments; both intense bliss and intense realignment with the Christed/Crystalline/Unity timelines. Our vibrancy is tested. Authenticity is tested. Spiritual maturity is tested. Oversoul groups are raising as many as possible into the higher experience with ease and grace. The brighter we glow, the easier it is for others to see the light.
Primary Christed timelines are very high vibrational creations, and by quantum effect they raise our experiences into zero point. Remember they are a part of bridging the worlds; we use them to Ascend to 5D. As always,the vibrational pass-key is the Christed/Crystalline HUman Heart.
In Love, Light and Service,Sandra
———–
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Where we use symbols to take in ' information' that endures through time, to reach into the parts of the mind that has become asleep and unaware.


The light energy has become interesting because it bypasses the mind, and the mind still requires to have some kind of intention, input and reasoning with whats going on. I have moments of being absolutely no thing, with no memory, no (3d) motivation, no impulse, no identity, no body, no form; just resting on a vast shelf of energy within  which I merge. 
 If my mind tries to figure out what is going on, a momentary flurry of worry wavers through, because it  feels close to not coming back at all.

It feels like waking up from a big sleep, and I get clunky and clumsy, when I come back;  my mind not sure what it is that I am supposed to be doing and I become like Bambi, not sure of how to walk in the world. 

 Maybe the story of Sleeping Beauty, where tangles of weeds and unpenetrable forests grow up all around, that binds the 'sleeping one/s' into a distant and dark dreamtime world....
 ....and all other such  fairytales, legends and folk lore that indicate 'mankind' as a sleeping identity... 
declares that we really do need to have the kiss and embrace of real love in order to wake up. 
  
Maybe we have these stories woven into our civilisations and cultures, because somewhere deep inside the collective psyche is the unknown and unpronounced 'knowing' that we hold within us the  instruction to WAKE UP.   Michaela.




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_Beauty

Sleeping Beauty

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 "Sleeping Beauty" (French: La Belle au bois dormant "The Beauty in the sleeping Wood") by Charles Perrault, or "Little Briar Rose" (German: Dornröschen), is a classic fairy tale which involves a beautiful princess, a sleeping enchantment, and a handsome prince. The version collected by the Brothers Grimm was an orally transmitted version of the originally literary tale published by Charles Perrault in Histoires ou contes du temps passé in 1697.[1] This in turn was based on Sun, Moon, and Talia by Italian poet Giambattista Basile (published posthumously in 1634), which was in turn based on one or more folk tales. The earliest known version of the story is found in the narrative Perceforest, composed between 1330 and 1344 and first printed in 2000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folklore

Folklore

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Folklore (disambiguation).

Overview[edit]

To fully understand folklore, it is helpful to clarify its component parts: the terms folk and lore. It is well-documented that the term was coined in 1846 by the Englishman William Thoms. He fabricated it to replace the contemporary terminology of "popular antiquities" or "popular literature". The second half of the compound word, lore, proves easier to define as its meaning has stayed relatively stable over the last two centuries. Coming from Old English lār 'instruction,' and with German and Dutch cognates, it is the knowledge and traditions of a particular group, frequently passed along by word of mouth.[1]
The concept of folk proves somewhat more elusive. When Thoms first created this term, folk applied only to rural, frequently poor and illiterate peasants. A more modern definition of folk is a social group which includes two or more persons with common traits, who express their shared identity through distinctive traditions. "Folk is a flexible concept which can refer to a nation as in American folklore or to a single family."[2] This expanded social definition of folk supports a broader view of the material, i.e. the lore, considered to be folklore artifacts. These now include all "things people make with words (verbal lore), things they make with their hands (material lore), and things they make with their actions (customary lore)".[3] Folklore is no longer circumscribed as being chronologically old or obsolete. The folklorist studies the traditional artifacts of a social group and how they are transmitted.
Transmission is a vital part of the folklore process. Without communicating these beliefs and customs within the group over space and time, they would become cultural shards relegated to cultural archaeologists. For folklore is also a verb. These folk artifacts continue to be passed along informally, as a rule anonymously and always in multiple variants. The folk group is not individualistic, it is community-based and nurtures its lore in community. "As new groups emerge, new folklore is created… surfers, motorcyclists, computer programmers".[4] In direct contrast to high culture, where any single work of a named artist is protected by copyright law, folklore is a function of shared identity within the social group.[5]
Having identified folk artifacts, the professional folklorist strives to understand the significance of these beliefs, customs and objects for the group. For these cultural units[6] would not be passed along unless they had some continued relevance within the group. That meaning can however shift and morph. So Halloween of the 21st century is not the All Hallows' Eve of the Middle Ages, and even gives rise to its own set of urban legends independent of the historical celebration. The cleansing rituals of Orthodox Judaism were originally good public health in a land with little water; now these customs signify identification as an Orthodox Jew. Compare this to brushing your teeth, also transmitted within a group, which remains a practical hygiene and health issue and does not rise to the level of a group-defining tradition.[7] For tradition is initially remembered behavior. Once it loses its practical purpose, there is no reason for further transmission unless it has been imbued with meaning beyond the initial practicality of the action. This meaning is at the core of folkloristics, the study of folklore.
With an increasingly theoretical sophistication of the social sciences, it has become evident that folklore is a naturally occurring and necessary component of any social group, it is indeed all around us.[8] It does not have to be old or antiquated. It continues to be created, transmitted and in any group is used to differentiate between "us" and "them".

http://literature.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-79

Symbolism Matters

Fairy tales refer to events taking place once upon a time, in a faraway realm—not here and now—and the opening and ending formulas of the tales underscore the otherness of the themes.1 A deceased mother takes the shape of a cow to help her daughter, boys turned into ravens dwell in a crystal mountain, girls prick themselves into a long sleep in the woods … Scores of such unreal stories have kept audiences and readers captive for untold generations, which suggests that—as Friedrich Max Müller put it long ago—the “epidemic” of “incredible and impossible” matter in Märchen and myth must “possess some raison d’être.”2

One way to understand the otherness of fairy tales is to assume that they are literally true to the reality of other times and places. Such was the prevailing understanding in the 19th century. The assumption that fairy tales are the narrative survival of customs and beliefs from other times and places has inspired two sorts of explanatory models. On the one hand, the evolutionist hypothesis stresses survival in time. As the British folklorist Andrew Lang put it, folklorists find in “proverbs and riddles, and nursery tales and superstitions … the relics of a stage of thought, which is dying out in Europe, but which still exists in many parts of the world.”3Specifically, fairy-tale imagery—being rife with magic, cannibalistic episodes, and a general lack of distinction between animals and humans—bespeaks “an age of savage fancy.”4 On the other hand, the diffusionist persuasion stresses resilience in space. The notion that tales were invented only once and then traveled, while carrying the cultural mark of their place of origin, had a worthy exponent in Emmanuel Cosquin. This French folklorist embraced the view that fairy tales originated in India, and he repeatedly argued that fairy-tale motifs match Hindu representations.5
Alas, it is hard to envision individuals bothering to learn something and pass it on if it means nothing to them.6Cosquin thought nothing of branding a chain of metamorphoses in a French text as an “ultra-bizarre ending” and then, one step ahead, professing that “such an Indian ending” is a true “Made in India” mark of origin.7This perilous line of argument raises various issues but focus on the main question: Why, if India’s conceptions were so unique, would Indian tales have been borrowed and nurtured by people who found them “bizarre”? A related problem plagues the evolutionist model. Lang acknowledges that some tale “forms are fitter than others, survive more powerfully, and are more widely spread.”8 This notion of differential fitness supposes a process of cultural selection that would discard any meaningless contents while preserving those themes that make sense to the taletellers and their audiences. This is a sensible assumption.9 But, crucially, it contradicts the notion that the “savage fancy” of bygone eras might survive in the modern fairy tale.
In short, the assumption that fairy tales might carry alien cultural traits fails to explain why those traits should have survived at all. Alternatively, the premise of symbolism assumes that the bizarre elements in fairy tales are (somehow) relevant to the taletellers and their audiences. Models that address fairy-tale contents as the symbolic expression of notions that are relevant to individuals and communities have no trouble explaining how fairy tales persist in tradition.
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Thursday, 29 March 2018

Looking at practical strategies for life. "Say ‘No’ and change your life."... I like this on-point article because its true for most for us (whatever age, sex or identity we choose), on so many levels. Mentally, spiritually, emotionally and physically we don't need to clutter up any more. If we think before we accept anything into our space, we avoid slipping down an avoidable rabbit hole that takes us further off course. We learn more about ourselves and what makes us tick at a finer level. Cutting down and cutting out everyone's else's demands on you (socially, obligatory, etc.) gives you time to see where you are slumping and limping through and not taking responsibility for your own higher needs; it gives you time to refine your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual 'POSTURE'. By-pass the 'inner chimp' and honour what helps you in maintaining 'Sovereignty' training. Michaela



https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/mar/18/the-power-of-saying-no-change-your-life-psychology-william-leith?CMP=share_btn_link

Say ‘No’ and change your life


 Taking no for an answer: William Leith gets positive about the negative. Photograph: Justin Metz for the Observer
My old friend Mick calls me with an invitation to his 50th birthday party. It sounds brilliant. Mick has rented a house for a week. Lots of people I know will be there. I want to go. I really, really want to go.
“So is that a yes?”
I want to say yes. I’m about to say yes. But there’s a problem. Part of me wants to say no. Part of me wants to spend that particular week writing my book. Those are days I’ve promised to my book.
At this exact moment, the yes I want to say feels several times stronger than the no I also want to say. There is a yes part of my brain, and it’s overriding the no part of my brain, and I am briefly filled with a blinding flash of “Yes – to hell with it!”
But I don’t say yes. I hold back for a second. What’s important to me here? My book, or a party? On the other hand, why do I write in the first place? To communicate with people, of course! And where better to communicate than at Mick’s party?
Yes or no? William Leith is learning about the freedom of replying in the negative
Pinterest
 Yes or no? William Leith is learning about the freedom of replying in the negative. Photograph: Alex Lake for the Observer
But I don’t say yes. Not yet. The no part of my brain is still in the fight, a boxer taking punches. The no inside my brain is resilient. Will you really enjoy the party, it’s asking me. Think of the book. You’ll never write the book if you spend your time going to parties!
Yes or no – the central dilemma. For most of my lifetime, yes has been winning the race. But recently no has made a strong comeback. The forces of no tell you not to give in to your impulsive side, but to look elsewhere in your brain for guidance. There are good reasons for this, mostly having to do with the fact that the world has recently changed very fast. We used to live in a world in which we didn’t need an inner no, because no was all around us. Now we live in a world designed to give us what we think we want. Now yes is all around us.
An outer yes requires an inner no.
Recently, an article in the Financial Times declared that no was the new yes, and cited books with titles such as The Power of No, and How to Say No Without Feeling Guilty. These are trendy self-help books. But I’ve been reading books on the no side of the equation for a few years now. The importance of saying no to your impulses is more than fashionable – it’s a necessity.
In 2002, the behavioural psychologist Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel prize for his work on saying no to your impulses; in 2017, Richard Thaler won another. Dozens of researchers and writers have picked up on the work done by Kahneman and his late colleague Amos Tversky. I have a whole shelf of their books. Of course, there’s Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, and Thaler’s Misbehaving. But also The Marshmallow Test by Walter Mischel, The Impulse Society by Paul Roberts, Irresistible by Adam Alter, Your Money and Your Brain by Jason Zweig, Wait by Frank Partnoy. And there’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying by Marie Kondo, for those who have said yes too many times, and need to clear their clutter.

Mick says: “So – is that a yes?”You have gut feelings, these authors tell us. You have impulses. Don’t say yes to these impulses. Think again. Say no.
I’m thinking that I’d love to go to Mick’s party – and also that the word yes is actually affecting the way I think. Over the last few years I’ve been to several sales seminars hosted by Jordan Belfort. The Wolf of Wall Street says that, if you want to generate a yes, it helps to use exactly the right tone of voice. Then ask the person a few innocuous questions and get them to agree with you – these utterances are called “micro-agreements”. Saying yes makes it harder to say no.
Yes! I want to say the word. I want to be marinated in a mutual moment of yes.
But I don’t say the word. Not just yet.
The psychologist Steve Peters gives one of the clearest metaphors for the impulsive part of the brain. He calls it the chimp. Everybody has an inner chimp, he says. Actually, he’s talking about the limbic system, the centre of emotions. We all have an inner human, too. Your inner human is located in the prefrontal cortex. The chimp makes snap judgments. It’s obsessed with food, sex and immediate danger. It’s there for a reason. Back when we were chimps, it was right most of the time. It made you fight when you needed to fight. It made you kill when you needed to kill. It was grabby, jealous, greedy. It still is.
‘When you see something you want, yes comes first. Yes is louder. No is a distant second,’ says William Leith.
 ‘When you see something you want, yes comes first. Yes is louder. No is a distant second,’ says William Leith. Illustration: Justin Metz/Observer
The prefrontal cortex, on the other hand, is what makes you human. Some people, Peters points out, might say it’s where your soul is. It seeks the truth. It looks for evidence. It argues rationally and sees the world in what Peters calls “shades of grey”.
One of the most important things Peters says is this: the inner chimp is much more powerful than the inner human. When information reaches the brain, it gets to the chimp first. The chimp has first dibs. Which means that everything you see or hear is framed by your impulses. When you see something you want, yes comes first. Yes is louder. No is a distant second.
One thing you might notice at this point is that we seem to be living in a world designed for the inner chimp in all of us. Politics is for chimps; Twitter is for chimps; clickbait is for chimps. In a broader sense, the internet is for chimps. Not all of it, of course. But watch the blogger Tim Urban’s brilliant Ted talk on procrastination. You start out with the best intentions. But it’s easy to fall down a rabbit hole.
I once had a conversation with the tech guru Jaron Lanier, who has strong feelings about this. These rabbit holes are not just based on our whims. They are engineered for us by expert robots. We are like rats in an experiment designed to get us to say yes. The experiment is relentless; it has almost unlimited resources and all the time in the world.
In The Impulse Society, Paul Roberts writes about a man called Brett Walker, who became addicted to the online game World of Warcraft. “For four years,” writes Roberts, “even as his real life collapsed, Walker enjoyed a near-perfect online existence, with virtually unlimited power and status akin to that of a Mafia boss crossed with a rock star.” In real life, Walker was “physically weak, financially destitute, and so socially isolated he could barely hold a face-to-face conversation”. The inventors of World of Warcraft had designed an astonishingly effective product.
“On the surface,” writes Roberts, “the tale of someone like Brett Walker may not seem relevant to those who don’t spend our days waging virtual war.” But that’s just on the surface. Roberts makes a powerful point: the rest of the world is more like an addictive game than you might think. Not just Netflix and Amazon, which are guided by rabbit-hole algorithms. It’s more than that, he says. It’s the whole consumer society. It’s the way we “fine-tune our lives”.
It’s a world geared to the chimp – or, in psychologist Walter Mischel’s terms, the “hot system” of impulse, rather than the “cool system” of taking stock, looking for evidence, thinking about what’s best in the long term. Daniel Kahneman refers to “system one” and “system two” – gut reaction versus taking a moment or two to think things through.
Jason Zweig refers to “thinking” and “feeling”. I think that Paul Roberts has put his finger on the reason lots of people are interested in this distinction. It’s the world. It’s changing. It’s designed for the chimp in all of us.
I interviewed Mike Morhaime and Frank Pearce, the inventors of World of Warcraft. “As I got older,” Morhaime told me, “I became fascinated with how computers worked. How everything evolved. And so I decided to go into electrical engineering. I was just so fascinated,” he said. He looked down at the table, and then up again. “I’ve just always been interested in the capabilities of different devices,” he said. “And getting them to talk to other devices. All the inputs and outputs on them, you know.”
Morhaime and Pearce didn’t have an office. They had a campus in Irvine, California. Lovely modern buildings and neat lawns. Frank Pearce’s office was full of plastic figurines of characters from the game – orcs and elves. And, of course, humans. “Mike is better at relationships and interacting with people than I am,” he told me. I was trying to find out why the game was so popular; why millions of people spent 20 or 30 hours a week playing it. Morhaime and Pearce had manipulated algorithms and got them to talk to each other. They had fine-tuned the algorithms for years. Eventually they had found a sweet spot in the human brain.
In the lobby was a map of the world that lit up. It was a data field of where people were saying yes to the game, in real time. They were saying yes in Los Angeles, Boston, Caracas, and Buenos Aires. They were saying yes in Madrid and Beijing.
Morhaime and Pearce are only the beginning. That’s what I imagine Jaron Lanier would say. That’s what Paul Roberts would say.
Mick says: “I’d love you to come.”
And I would love to come. I can always write my book another time. My brain runs calculations. It’s doing what behavioural psychologists call “future-discounting”. I want to say yes now. If I say yes now, I’ll be happy. Then I’ll be able to look forward to the party. Then I’ll go to the party. That’s a lot of happiness. The chimp in my head is totting everything up. But there’s a problem. He’s using chimp maths. Chimp maths is not real maths. It’s what you use when you’re wondering whether to have the salad or the fries. Look at those fries! They are 10 times better – order them! That’s chimp maths.
Chimp maths says yes to the party. But my prefrontal cortex knows that if I say no now, I’ll be happier – but not until later. The question is: how much is deferred happiness worth? And how do you persuade yourself to say no to happiness now?
I interviewed Frank Partnoy, the author of Wait, a book about the benefits of not capitulating to your inner chimp. Before I met him, he sent me an email: “Given the crush of technology, email, social media, and 24-hour news, most of us react and decide too quickly. We are hard-wired to snap respond to fast, salient stimulus, even when it is to our disadvantage.” In other words, the world has got too fast for us. Things have evolved to grab the chimp’s attention. Food is fast. It’s engineered to get glucose into our blood as soon as possible. Social media is fast. It stirs us up. It engages the chimp.
To thrive, we must slow down. Everybody else is led by their inner chimp. So slow down. If you wait, you’ll win.
In The Marshmallow Test, Walter Mischel tells us about his famous experiment involving children and marshmallows. Partnoy describes it, too. It’s one of the most influential experiments in recent behavioural psychology. In the experiment, conducted at Stanford University in 1960s, four-year-old children were given a choice. A marshmallow was put in front of them, and they were told that they could eat the marshmallow now, or wait 15 minutes, after which they would be given two marshmallows.
The kids were left alone in the room with the marshmallows. Some said yes. Some said no, for the whole 15 minutes. The kids were monitored over the years. Those who had said no got better grades. Also, they “were less prone to impulsive behaviour”, and, according to tests, were “more likely” to be well-adjusted.
Party or book? “The hotter and more salient the desired reward,” writes Mischel, “the more difficult it is to cool the impulsive reaction to it.”
On the other hand: “The power is not in the stimulus… but in how it is appraised.”
And, of course: “The power resides in the prefrontal cortex, which, if activated, allows almost endless ways of cooling hot, tempting stimuli by changing how they are appraised.”
As Frank Partnoy would say: wait. As Steve Peters would say: allow time for the information to move beyond the chimp. You don’t have to be “hijacked by your chimp”. You can let yourself feel your chimp’s emotions, and wait for them to pass. Be rational. Say no to the marshmallow right now, and you might find yourself with two marshmallows in the future.
I’m desperate to go to the party. I really am. It would be such fun. Why not just go for a couple of days? Why not? But that’s chimp maths. I can see what would happen. I’d have to make arrangements, pack, drive to the place. I’d be anticipating it for a couple of days beforehand. I’d be excited and anxious. My focus would go. Then it would take me a couple of days to wind down. I’d lose a week.
“The thing is,” I say to Mick, “I can’t.”

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