1 Your Best Thinking

Steve Pavlina
 Submersion 1 - Your Best Thinking

Welcome to Submersion. This is Steve Pavlina, your host and guide for this
fascinating deep dive into the wild world of Subjective Reality. This is very
much an experiential program. This means that we're not just going to be
covering ideas and concepts and high-level abstract notions about how
reality works. We're actually going to be trying this in a very hands-on way,
so there'll be lots of exercises and explorations to do as we go through this.
Really I'd say this program is about leveling up your relationship with
reality, so as we'll share later on in this program, you can think about reality
as something or even someone that you have a relationship with, and if you
think about it in the context of a relationship similar to having a human
relationship, it really sheds a lot of light on things and gives you some
fascinating new ways of making decisions.

The cool part about this is that your relationship with reality is your one and
only permanent relationship. This is the relationship you've had the entire
time you've been here in this realm of existence (whatever you want to call
it). Then this is the one relationship that will always be there. As long as
you're a conscious being, you exist in some kind of framework or some kind
of reality, and you have a relationship with that reality. Even if you die and
you believe that there's some kind of afterlife or that your consciousness or
your spirit or some part of you exists beyond this reality, then that
relationship continues. You still have another reality. Maybe it's the same
one. Maybe it's a different one. But you still have that relationship with
reality to explore, and so the quality of your life, the quality of your very
existence, the flavor of how you experience life in this world or in any
world, is going to depend in large part on the quality of your relationship
with the reality container in which you exist, in which you find yourself.
And that is perhaps one of the most powerful things we're going to explore
in this program.

This is a very unique and different and unusual program. Chances are
you've never seen anything like it. I've never seen anything like it, hence the
desire to create it. So let me start with a suggestion here, and we'll talk
about an intention that you may set for this program as well – actually
several intentions – so first, give yourself full permission to focus on yourself
and your relationship with reality. This is very much designed to be a deeply
introverted and selfish exploration for you to explore, and we're going to

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explore especially how you're showing up in that relationship and when you
feel aligned, when your life is flowing well, and when you feel misaligned
and when your life is not flowing well. What are the patterns there? What
can we learn from this? I want you to give really deep attention to your own
hero's journey here.

My role is to be your guide, to be your host, to be the facilitator of whatever

growth experience this becomes for you. You could think of me like Yoda
from Star Wars. I'm not the hero. I'm not Luke Skywalker. That's your role to
play. You could also think of me like the character of Professor Dumbledore
from the Harry Potter world or the character of Morpheus from The Matrix
movies. So I'm not the hero in the story. You're the hero in the story.
Consequently, I want to really keep the focus deeply on you and your reality
and your relationship with your universe. I'm part of your reality. I'm part of
your universe, but my role is objectively speaking, you could say, I'm a
friendly human being on this planet with you, and I'm here to help share
what I've learned. I've studied this for many, many years, and so I'm passing
on possibilities and ideas and exercises and tools for you to use for your
own exploration.

Subjectively speaking, you could say that I'm part of your reality reaching
out to you. I'm a representative of your universe that wants to invite you to
build a deeper, stronger, better, closer, more trusting relationship. Like
something got triggered in your reality – maybe you reached a certain point
on your path of growth, and reality said, "Oh, you're ready for a whole new
experience of leveling up." And I'm the conduit in your reality through
which that takes place. Either perspective is valid. You can even combine
both together and switch back and forth. Consequently, this is not about me
sharing my personal stories. I can give you general examples, but I really
want to focus on you and your experience.

Now you might be coming into this program with a bit of skepticism or
hesitation about this whole Subjective Reality thing, and that's totally fine. I
get that. I understand that. But this is a program where no belief is actually
necessary because it's an exploration, and I really encourage you to frame
this as an exploration. You're not loading in new beliefs here to replace your
old beliefs. What you're doing here is you're learning new lenses, new

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frames, new ways of thinking about reality, new tools to experiment with,
new exercises to try and to test. This is an exploration, just as you can use a
tool like a piece of technology without having to believe in it, without
having to know how it works behind the scenes. You can just pick it up and
start using it like anyone can. It's the same with this program. This is
something you can pick up, and you can explore it. You can use it, but at no
point do you really have to believe it.

You don't have to have that posture or that attitude, that belief is necessary,
so I want to just address that objection right up front because the key here is
to just approach this as an explorer. Approach it with an open mind. See
how these ideas land for you, and see if there's any growth potential in
applying some of these to your own life. What tools can you use to help you
solve more problems and so on. So for your intention for getting started
here, you can frame whatever intention you like.

Let me give you some suggestions that I think might be helpful. First of all, I
suggest that you intend to treat this as a serious personal growth deep dive
like not just taking it so casually, but really summoning what curiosity you
can about exploring your relationship with reality and realizing that there's
incredible potential here. If you can up-level that relationship, if this is the
base relationship in your life upon which all other human relationships are
built, then getting that relationship right and getting it trusting and getting
it closer, that can create all kinds of positive ripples throughout your entire
life in ways that may surprise you.

Secondly, I suggest you bring a sense of playfulness, of wonder to this,

connected with this curiosity. So on the one hand, you're taking it seriously,
but on the other hand, you're open to fresh possibilities. You're coming at
this again like an explorer, so an explorer may have a serious side, but as an
explorer, you also need to be open to the possibility of discovering
something amazing in a new way that you've never seen before. This
program is more experience focused than outcome focused, so by that I
mean that we're going to focus on just diving into it and seeing what's there
without getting so attached to trying to create any particular type of
outcome.

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Now it's fine if you have some outcome based intentions like for what you'd
like to get out of this program, what you'd like to experience from it, but I
think you'll actually get more value out of it, and you'll open yourself to
more surprises and more of the possibility space if you can be extra open
minded and focus on just having the experience and diving into that aspect.
Consider that reality wants to have a better and closer relationship to you,
and this is an invitation. This is your reality's way of inviting you in to see if
you can meet it halfway as you go through this.

Have the intention also to discover new truths. A good intention to frame,
especially at the outset, is to say to yourself, I perceive reality accurately.
Have that intention. There's a lot of power in that intention about trying to
increase the accuracy of your perceptions and the accuracy of how you
frame reality, what kind of lenses you use to relate to it.

And another intention is to intend to complete this journey. There can be

plenty more experimenting and exploring beyond this program, but if you
can commit up front to completing the whole journey, then I think that will
really set you up for a successful path because you don't want to just go
partway through and then drop out and quit. You want to go as far as you
can and really finish it if you can because the value is in really exploring the
territory fully and to really get a complete map built. You want to go
through the entire journey, if that's possible for you. As part of this, decide
when you'll listen. Take this as time out of your day for yourself.

You can even do these sessions as walking meditations. Go for a walk

somewhere; listen as you go. I suggest doing these sessions early in the day.
Whenever you begin your day, try to get this in early so that you can set the
tone for the day. Set the framing of this being a part of your life's
exploration that means something to you. And so you put it early in your
agenda, and then you can ponder the ideas and use the tools and conduct
the experiments throughout the day.

Some of the tools – not all of them – but some of them that we share in
these lessons are ones you can apply repeatedly throughout the day or even
just continuously throughout the day. They can be lenses to use different
frames for looking at reality, different problem solving tools. So if you start

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this early in the day, it will give you a chance to extend that
experimentation throughout your whole day. It's okay if you do it later in
the day. That's an option too, but if you really want to explore this day by
day where you're having the chance to lock it in as daily practice, I think it's
really powerful if you can get this in early in the day.

So that's a collection of intentions that I'm just suggesting, just throwing out
there. You can take those, or you can leave those. You can combine them
with your intentions. You can use the ones you like, you can leave behind
the ones you don't like, but at this moment just get a sense of your intention
for this program. What's your attitude towards it? What would you like to
experience and explore? Do you feel excited about it? Are you curious about
it? Do you have a sense of maybe a little bit of fear? Who knows? Whatever
it is, set your intention right now for that. My intention is that you enjoy this
exploration, that it expands what's possible for you, that it takes things that
were previously not reachable for you, and it brings them within reach so
you can access new possibilities, new experiences that you may never have
had before. I also intend that you'll appreciate this – that you even find it in
the end to be a beautiful experience, maybe one of the most interesting and
fascinating experiences you've had while working on your personal growth.

So I really again suggest that you bring an explorer's attitude to this. Reality
could work differently than you previously assumed, right? You may not
have all the answers right now in your life, and you're never going to know
unless you explore. And this is a really wild and different kind of
exploration than you may have previously encountered. What is your
current best thinking about your relationship with reality? So by this I mean
if you had to guess at the truth, I understand you may have some
uncertainty about how reality really works – like who knows how it really
works? But if you had to answer questions like: What is this reality? What
are you? What really happens to you if you die physically? Do you continue
to exist afterwards?

So what are your best answers to that right now? And again, just guess if
you had to place a bet on it – bet on one type of answer being more likely to
be correct than all the other possibilities out there. So start with: What is
this reality? Is this a physical universe? Is it a world of energy? Physical

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energy? Spiritual energy? Is it some kind of dream world? Is it some kind of

simulation? What do you think is the most likely possibility? Be as specific
as you can about your answer there.

And within this reality, what are you? How do you think of yourself? Are
you a physical body with a mind? Do you have a consciousness, or are you a
consciousness? Are you the consciousness in which this apparent physical
body arises, like a dreamer having a dream. And what happens to you if you
die? So can you die physically? Do you think this is a world in which your
physical body can be killed? Maybe other people can be killed, but can you?
Do you actually believe that's a possibility for you?

And then if you do have to go through the experience of dying and death,
what happens to you? What happens to your consciousness? What happens
to your body? What is your best thinking about that? If you have to come up
with an answer, what kind of answer will you come up with? And I
encourage you to say it aloud, like just speak it out loud. You can answer
these questions: What is this reality? What are you? And what happens if
you die? Those three questions. Just speak the answers aloud whenever you
have time. Or you can also journal about it: write it down, just type it up
somewhere, or even handwrite it. Or alternatively you can discuss it with
other people like a relationship partner, and just share your best answers
with each other.

What's the clearest understanding you have of how this reality works?
Articulate your philosophy. It's totally okay, again, to be uncertain, but if you
have to come up with an answer, what is it? And then to extend this, once
you come up with those answers, ask this question: How do you know?

Why are these your guesses? Why are these your best thinking? Did you
learn these answers from somebody else? Were they taught to you growing
up? Is there some ancient book that says, “this is how reality works”? Was
there news about it? Word of mouth? Was there some observed evidence
and clues that you picked up? Did you feel it somehow? Did you sense it?
Did it just feel intuitively right to you? Did you hear something about
scientists reporting something about it? Like we researched how reality

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works, and here's what's coming up. Here's our best thinking. Are you
basically regurgitating someone else's best thinking?

How did you come up with your best thinking? Do you even know? Can you
articulate that? If you can, say that out loud too, like here's what I think my
best thinking is. Or journal about it. Write it down. Or discuss it with
somebody else. And the reason I'm asking you to articulate it verbally or in
writing or through discussion is to actually put that out there into your
reality. Don't just keep it in your mind, but actually give it some kind of
form. Give it sound waves. Give it text form. Give it the form of a
conversation. But put that belief or that idea, that lens into your reality. Just
bounce it into the world, and see how it lands.

And you can always change your answer. You can hear yourself saying
something or read back what you wrote and think: You know what? I don't
actually think I believe that. Let me try again. And you can change your
answer to that.

As a follow-up question to this, what if your best thinking is wrong or

simply inaccurate? How would you know? How could you tell? And right
now, do you have any doubts about your best thinking? Do you look at that
best thinking that you've come up with and say, “I'm pretty confident about
this; I'm pretty sure I'm right”? Or are you looking at it and thinking, I could
be radically incorrect on all of this. I really don't have a clue. It's really tough
to force myself to even guess on this because I just don't know. I really don't
know.

But then when your best thinking comes out and you try to push yourself to
know, if you're not satisfied with those answers and you feel like something
doesn't quite add up, that's an interesting conundrum, isn't it? It means that
there's definitely an opportunity to level up your understanding, to level up
your accuracy.

If you know for pretty sure that your best thinking is filled with holes or has
some glaring problems, like you can't answer a good question here, such as:
Why are you You and not somebody else? Or why are you conscious? Why
do you seem to have consciousness? Does your model of reality – does your

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best thinking – have an answer for those questions? Can it explain why you
are you and not me? Can it answer that? Can it explain why you have
consciousness?

So our goal here in this program is is to learn by exploration and to keep

trying to level up, keep trying to improve our accuracy, keep trying to
improve our understanding. It's said that the beginning of wisdom is
admitting that you don't really know anything, so that's a good starting
place for this.

Even when we come up with our best thinking, we may look at it and think
that it's got some holes in it, so we want to try to improve upon that. Can
you, by the end of this program, come up with different best thinking that
has different answers than you have now? Can you imagine that at the
conclusion of this program, you have a clearer and more accurate
understanding of what reality is, of what you are, and how those two things
connect; how you relate to reality, what are you, what is reality, and what is
the relationship between the two of you? Can you imagine having a better
understanding of death, of what it is, what it means, of what might happen
afterwards? If that's all that happened in this program, that would have
some fascinating rippling changes in your life if you simply had better
answers to those questions.

Here's a key to having a better life: It's simply alignment with the truth. But
in order to really discover the truth, we have to experiment a bit. We have
to explore. So I invite you to be willing to have your old models of reality
cracked, to be willing to have your best thinking challenged, to be willing to
poke holes in it and come up with something better.

Let's close with an exercise, and in each of these sessions you'll notice that I
share some kind of exercise. Some of these are just like little mental
challenges to do, and many of them are fairly simple.

So this first one is pretty simple. As you go through your day today, try to
ask yourself a number of times – there's no particular number that you have
to do – but try to ask yourself several times: What is my best thinking on

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something? And that something is whatever comes up in front of you,

whatever events happen during the day.

So you could ask: What is my best thinking on this problem or situation that
came up at work? What is my best thinking on my work itself and my future
on this career path that I'm on? What is my best thinking on a human
relationship that I'm in? On a coworker? On a relationship partner? On a
friend? On a family member? What is your best thinking on what the status
of that is and where it's heading? Or anything that seems interesting to you.
You could be having a drink or something, a cup of coffee, whatever, and
you can ask: What is my best thinking on this coffee?

So this is an invitation for you to access more of your best thinking. What is
the experience like? How do you frame this? How does this fit your whole
life? How does this fit the nature of reality? What does that cup of coffee
have to do with your relationship with life? What does it mean to you?
Whatever answer you come up with is totally fine.

The purpose here is not to come up with the right answer per se, but the
purpose here is to try to stretch yourself to clarify what your best thinking
really is. What does it look like? What does it sound like? See what your
mind expresses when you actually ask that best thinking type of question.

The cool thing about your best thinking is that it can surface many hidden
beliefs and assumptions that you didn't even know you had. So this is very
much an awareness exercise. So as you go through your day, just keep
asking this question. Whenever you feel so inclined, you can write it down
somewhere, set reminders on whatever device you want to notify you at a
certain time of day to remember to ask this question if you like. Or you can
just do your best to remember it, but try to allow yourself to lean into
having more awareness of what is your current best thinking, what bubbles
up to your consciousness – to the surface – when you ask this question.

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