The Simplicity of Idenics - By Mike Goldstein

In an arena as vast as the self-improvement field, it is hard to determine who has the right answers. It is fair to say that there are lots of "answers". Thousands of ideas and concepts, many of which are similar but stated differently, have been put forth for you to choose from. There is, however, one subject that has never really been addressed or given much importance. This subject I call "additives".

By "additive", I simply mean something that is added. The ideas and concepts that people think themselves to be are additive. The ideas and concepts at the bottom of personal unwanted conditions are additive. If people could simply take a look, inspect and "let go" of these additives they could release themselves from their self-imposed chains. Most of the time, however, they just keep "adding".

The primary source of additives for a person is him/her self. The amount of garbage people can heap on themselves trying to figure out what is "wrong" with them can be staggering. Our own responses to questions we ask ourselves, such as, "What's wrong with me?" and "Why do I do that?", can be a source of continual misery. The great liability of self-inquiry is creating additives and getting stuck with them.

Unable to resolve unwanted conditions themselves, people have turned to others for assistance, and their cry for help has been answered. Ask for this help and you are deluged with the thousands of methods and systems promising to propel you to relief or personal freedom. But following these paths has only led to further misery and frustration for most, as the answers, concepts and ideas provided to you by others are further additives.

Even though the additives a person can accumulate from others can provide a temporary relief, they do not usually lead to an individual being able to "let go" and thereby resolve an unwanted condition. It can be argued that temporary relief is better than the constant pain. However, there is usually a price. The person gets the "quick fix" but this soon wears off. The individual still has the unwanted condition but may also be stuck with the additive. Let me give you some examples of these kinds of additives.

The explanations people are given for their unwanted conditions are additives. People love explanations. Explanations, whether correct or incorrect, need only to be bought into to provide one with temporary relief. For example, Jim goes to a psychic and says, "I have all these issues in my life, I'm unhappy, tell me why." The psychic says, "When you go to sleep, aliens are beaming you with special rays." Jim thinks to himself, "I guess I do sometimes feel lethargic when I get up in the morning, yeah, that makes sense." And he may feel better, temporarily. The answer explains things to him. Here's another example. Jane has a low self-image. She buys a book on "How To Improve Your Self-Esteem". The author says, "The reason you have low self-esteem is because of ideas your parents installed in you when you were young." Jane thinks to herself, "Well, my father did tell me I was worthless several times, yeah, that makes sense." And she may feel better for the rest of the day. The next day some situation in life occurs, and she falls right back into the same old stuck condition of low self-esteem. But people tend to hold on to these explanations even if they work only once. She still has the condition, but also has the explanation: an additive because it adds on to the condition. If you've ever spoken with someone who has spent years in therapy, you might find they could sit and talk with you for hours explaining all the reasons why they have the conditions they do, but they still have the conditions. What you are listening to are additives.

People seem to gravitate to, even crave additives. What is at the foundation of the problem has become desired in the solution. For this reason, groups selling the most additives, "pretended knowingness", "pie in the sky", etc., will continue to prosper. People leaving such groups ponder on how the group could get rich preying on the misery of others. But such groups wouldn't even be in business if they didn't fulfill some demand: in this case a demand for answers and solutions.

In a field overflowing with the selling of additives, I choose to assist people with as little additive as possible. This is the cornerstone of the subject of Idenics . Yes, we must have a technology and mechanics which we use to assist people in the resolution of their unwanted conditions. And the sole purpose of all this technology and mechanics is to get the person to take a look. The mechanics are the "words". The nonjudgemental, nonevaluative, nonadditive application is the "music". Opinion, suggestion and advice have no place in the application of Idenics . But most people pay little attention to this aspect of Idenics and concentrate only on the mechanics of the subject. This not only makes it difficult to describe what we do, but also makes it difficult to train Idenics facilitators. To train a facilitator to not even have an opinion about the person he/she is working with, to get him/her able to understand that the full source of information about a client is that client, is not an easy task. But this is a necessity if clients are to attain their desired results in a relatively short amount of time.

People find it hard to imagine how our clients resolve for themselves, so quickly, issues that have been bothering them for years and through so many previously used systems. Here are some observations I have made over the past ten years with Idenics : People are not as screwed up as they have believed or others would have had them believe. They can do this work quite easily in most cases, if we don't get in their way. What do we mean by "not getting in their way"? Not giving judgments, evaluations, suggestions, opinions or advice. All these things are additive and get in a person's way.

In Idenics we trust our clients, believe our clients and respect their uniqueness and self-determinism. We put the integrity of what we are doing above our own desires for expansion and financial success. It's not always an easy road, but our clients do well, and that's the best pay one can get in this business.

Whether you come to us for service or not, I hope that what I've said about additives will be of some assistance to you. Thank you for listening, and for taking a look.

Sincerely,
Mike Goldstein

Man's Search for Meaning - by Mike Goldstein

Man's search for meaning... a journey that has many roads; many paths - some rewarding, some strewn with fool's gold. A continuing thread in this quest seems to be the seeker looking for understanding from sources outside himself: the new guru, divine revelations, whatever.

Cognitive awareness, self-awareness, if you will is THE defining characteristic of Man. If nothing else, a being usually knows he exists as an individual entity. He is unique and has his own interpretation of the universe the way he perceives it to be. This interpretation will always be there no matter what new concepts are grasped, new insights gained.

An individual's life is a component thing - made up of many different interests and relationships: a job, friends, family, different groups to which he belongs or is affiliated. These may blend, enhance or detract from one another, but they are definitely separate parts of the pattern of his existence.

A being has many viewpoints relating to these various activities and interests. A viewpoint is simply the way a person views and evaluates any part of his life. in Idenics, these viewpoints are called identities. Simply stated, an identity is a separate self created by the being, consisting of emotions, beliefs, ideas and evaluations, to carry out some primary goal or purpose. Easy to see examples of this might be a "husband" or "wife" identity - or a job-related identity such as "real estate agent", "taxi driver", or "bank president". Apparently, there is the basic being, the "I", which experiences life, via these identities, shifting in and out of them automatically, without much thought. The following is a simple example of a person going form one identity to another: A computer salesman comes home to the wife and kids and shifts into his "husband/father" identity. It would be inappropriate if all he did was to continue to try to sell his family computers. Selling computers is the primary goal or purpose of his "salesman" identity, not his "husband/parent" identity.

But why all this talk about identities? What does it have to do with personal growth? People, whether they are seeking greater self-awareness or not, usually have things about themselves that they don't like - conditions that they have but don't want, yet can't seem to get rid of. These unwanted conditions such as "I have a bad temper", "I procrastinate all the time", "I'm so confused about personal goals", keep people from being happy, let alone reaching more enlightened states. One of the main discoveries in Idenics is that these unwanted conditions are the property of identities, and by addressing these identities the unwanted conditions can be easily resolved.

Having identities is not in itself aberrative to the individual. The assumption of identities as in the above example does not cause the person difficulty. But the unknowing assumption of certain identities that one gets stuck in and believes are really him, do cause an individual all sorts of trouble.

Let us liken an identity to a suit of armor. The person knows he's not the armor. He gets in it, it limits his movement, but it can be useful in certain circumstances. But what if he thinks he is this suit of armor? What if there was no separation between him and it? It might work fine in battle, but what if he tries swimming in it? He'd sink, of course. Now he won't go near the water because he believes he's got this unresolvable condition.

The above analogy may be a bit simplistic, but it does serve in explaining a point. People are 'sunk' by identities they think they are and can't get out of. Unaware of identities, a person may believe he's limited and he's got unwanted conditions. A myriad of reasons and explanations will be invented for undesirable situations that may make sense, but don't resolve the conditions.

The idea of identities is not new. Many names have been given to them and lots of explanations of how they come to be. Many schools of thought mention identities and have for hundreds of years, perhaps for thousands. But much about identities, how and why they are formed, their characteristics and make-up, their relationship to Man's problems, how they're dealt with, and their relative importance in Man's search for self-actualization was not known prior to Idenics.

Idenics is essentially an evolutionary step in the development of a system for self improvement and awareness. It is a new system, not just a rehash of some earlier subject. if you have been involved in other methods of personal development you have probably acquired certain basic information that you use and is true for you. Likewise, there are probably things that you found unworkable and false. Idenics will bring about no conflict on either account. It should, in fact, reinforce what's true for you and answer any questions you may have as to why other things are unworkable. Even thought Idenics is a new subject it will align to earlier knowledge. This is because, as with all new developments, it has evolved out of earlier knowledge and experience.

The purpose of Idenics is to help the being regain control over viewpoints he assumes to play the game of life. Self-actualization? Finding out who you are may be as simple as finding out who you are not.

For information about the Idenics philosophy, please browse their website at www.idenics.com
If you're keen on this kind of therapy as a solution for you, it would be a good idea to buy the book and read it.