#2. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny. (Upanishad, via Deepak Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Laws of Success).

In fact, it’s an entire program of personal development with four successive levels, starting from discerning desires and then proceeding to will (I think it’s about habits / perception patterns / attention management) to deeds (action management) to destiny. Very close to Ignatius Loyola’s idea of discernment of spirits as the first step of spiritual development.

Back to Chopra’s book — a wise and refreshing one. Deep books often have misleading names, looks rather like publisher’s advice. It’s also interesting how easily Chopra integrates some Christian concepts, like the expression “state of grace” he uses there. Looking forward to reading The Third Jesus.

Undoubtedly, one of the main problems of the Information Age is information. How we can select, digest, interpret, learn and transfer it the most effectively? For example, it’s crucial in any form of learning, but especially in online learning, to be sure a student has really understood a topic and got the meaning the authors have intended to convey. It’s equally important when we come to personal development: how to find a sure ground in the overwhelming chaos of theories, movements, views and possibilities constantly present around us?

One of the hints comes from Merab Mamardashvili, a Georgian/Russian philosopher who introduced the idea of “Perception Cone” — an evolving field of findividual experience.

It’s clear that our perception doesn’t hold all the information we are able to perceive — in fact, we ignore the most of it. Our perception, our ability to feel, experience, be alive, are, Mamardashvili says, inside some cone which doesn’t coincide with the set of external objects around us. For example, you can listen to radio without actually hearing anything, but instantly hear a song that moves you. In the same way, if you try reading a book that isn’t interesting to you, its contents is just inaccessible to you. It looks like the way we communicate with the world is via a sort of “speaking things”, impressions or dream particles which arise in us interest, emotions and motivation. We can learn and work productively only within our inner cone, as all unrelated information will be screened anyway. That cone grows basing on growing personal experience (not on cramming).

Then, the first task of learning is to transfer knowledge and skills from an external state of impersonal “information” to the inner perception cone of anindividual , making them accessible for further exploration. Accordingly, the first task of self development is to realize your cone, to track the path of your personal evolution, your relationships and ideas history. That means that the half of the time we spend to learning new things should, in fact, be spent to getting the meaning from the experience we’ve already got.

The most important secret of life isn’t hidden somewhere in the head of a Grandaster who has to reveal them to us. The most important secret is that we already know everything the most important to us.

There is a strange phenomena in the art of writing. On the one hand, every writer wants her writing to find response among the readership, i.e. to be universal. On the other hand, you can only write well about things unique to you — things you are interested in, belonging to your inner world (which no one else fully understands). Looks like, contrary to habitual opinion, personal is the most universal.

We don’t fully know how exactly we are unique. In a sense, one is unique rather with the vector of her growth than with something she already has, so, an objective knowledge of what your uniqueness consists in is impossible.

Looks like the bridge between personal and universal is interest. The more interesting, i.e. emotionally engaging, is the matter to the writer, the more exciting may her writing be to the readers. (If, of course, one is of sound mind :) So, emotions, a deeply personal and irrational thing which is so often considered as standing in the way of objectivity, turns out to be a criterion of universality and, therefore, verity.

But there are different kinds of excitement. A cops and robbers films produces an intensive but low-quality excitement, especially if you already passed the teen age. By the way, as I reread adventure books from my childhood, I find that I almost don’t recall the plot. My memory kept only things (or states of mind?) which were unrelated to the plot. And by some strange occurrence exactly those states of mind are still exciting and still productive for me now.

A plot, however dramatic, is but a mean to manage reader’s attention. It just makes the transition to a productive reality easier. It is just one of many possibilities, yet often misused as reality’s substitute.

Malevich’s Black Square is a declaration of radical rejection of object/plot in painting. In literature, an example of similar attitude is Proust’s work where through an objectless plot constantly shines author’s mind and emotions, provoking reader’s emotions as a deep inner resonance which is totally different from the plot adrenaline.

Through a habit, which is born out of plot-dominated art, we sometimes even imagine our own lives as such a stories, trying to deduce their meaning from plot details. That is where empty hopes and naive adventurism, as well as most of business storytelling come from.

But reality is different — only our dreams are real, only emotions speak, and only our path exists, with its beginning and end hidden from our eyes :)

Now, I’m going to explain this whole blog’s concept.

David Galenson came up recently with an interesting theory about creative people. Briefly, he divides them into conceptualists and experimentalists.

«What he has found is that genius — whether in art or architecture or even business — is not the sole province of 17-year-old Picassos and 22-year-old Andreessens. Instead, it comes in two very different forms, embodied by two very different types of people. “Conceptual innovators,” as Galenson calls them, make bold, dramatic leaps in their disciplines. They do their breakthrough work when they are young. Think Edvard Munch, Herman Melville, and Orson Welles. They make the rest of us feel like also-rans. Then there’s a second character type, someone who’s just as significant but trudging by comparison. Galenson calls this group “experimental innovators.” Geniuses like Auguste Rodin, Mark Twain, and Alfred Hitchcock proceed by a lifetime of trial and error and thus do their important work much later in their careers. (Wired).»

David Galenson surely has a point. At least, my observations fully adjust with this theory. As for me, I am a definite experimentalist. Not that my age doesn’t leave me a chance to be a conceptualist, it just reflects my method of learning :) When I start doing something, I rarely know exactly what will happen, in spite of all my efforts to figure out the outcome. It’s just an unknown, deep, beautiful dream I follow. Then it starts growing and developing, and I start getting the outcome vision. And then I adjust the process and get the result, which isn’t the end, but rather a path to a bigger dream.

I think this approach reflects the way a lot of other people learn, too. So, Second Sight is a blog about personal development and lifetime learning, in the spirit of experiments and constant search for better.

Then, there is a second reason for this name. I believe that one of the most needed skills in life is the skill of seeing through current patterns of perception and thinking, which I conventionallly call second sight. So, this blog is about real as opposed to apparent. This is where the name of this blog came from. So, Second Sight is a blog about the art of discerning real as opposed to seeming and about the ways of learning this art, with main themes like vision, motivation, creativity, productivity, lifehacking, and so on.

Another reason for Second Sight’s name is that in fact, I already do have a blog, so, Second Sight is really my second blog. By the way, my first blog is an a-lister, the only trick is that it’s in Russian. After people started translating my posts into English (thank you, Alex), I realized that there is a chance to be heard by a wider audience.

And, finally, the reason is you, the reader. Because it’s a blog, not a sermon. Discussion helps sharpen the vision and broaden its horizons. Feel free to join in and share your views and experiences.