Comparisons to Lee Gerdes's Brain State Technology (?)

Hi Michael

I thought that I would add this post, which is a copy of a post to another forum.  It is my thinking regarding Holosync or any other brain entrainment tool versus neurofeedback tools.  There is a lot of discussion out there and generally the neurofeedback people claim that forcing people into brainwave states is not a good thing.  I personally disagree with that but here is my more detailed response:

Reply by simon on January 3, 2010 at 9:37am

Hi there
I am new to this forum and it is great to see an active group of people posting about holosync. I am currently working through this very issue myself; does holosync deal with shadow material? As a HS user at Pur Lvl 4 I am still in counselling, still finding shadow structures and I don't think that is going to change any time soon. In a way both Bill and Ken Wilbur are right. Bill is right that using HS will resolve a lot of shadow material. As the central nervous system (CNS) has to respond to the HS input there is going to be shadow material that must be resolved in order to evolve to the next level (a level of evolution that now overcomes the HS input, until the next level disc is used). However it seems clear to me that the amount of resolution is always going to be the minimum amount in order to overcome the HS input. The CNS is not going to be particular about what is restricting evolution, it just does what ever it can to evolve. So a lot of shadow material gets left behind at each HS level. My understanding of what Ken Wilbur says is that evolutionary growth can still happen with shadow material present, but the growth will take on a dysfunctional form until there is a more complete resolution of the shadow. So you can have old shadows from childhood years plus new ones created at the higher evolutionary levels. Poor life outcomes as a result of shadow can still continue, but because you are more evolved you can recognise and be cool about having a shadow (so life does improve). So here Ken is right, HS doesn't do a proper job of dealing with shadow material, because that is not HS's focus. And that is true for all meditation techniques. There is one additional benefit of using the HS system over traditional methods; you will keep evolving if you keep using the discs as suggested - no matter what! With a traditional method of meditation it is easy for the CNS/brain to try all sorts of tricks (like falling asleep instead of meditating) to avoid receiving the input that will mean it has to evolve. My guess would be that the poorer your upbringing (and/or the more shadow material already in your ego structure) then the more resistance and the more likely the CNS/brain will be trying all sorts of tricks to avoid actually meditating. So this has meant that there was always a natural selection of reasonably well adjusted individuals who became the most advanced meditators. It is well known that serious meditators have used counselling and psychotherapy to assist in them making progress for this very reason. Now with HS that is irrelevant. That is both good and bad. It means that any individual can now experience the power of advanced meditation (and its associated benefits), but with the possibility that the evolved ego-structure is still quite dysfunctional (at least for that level of evolutionary development anyway). I believe that this will be the largest issue facing HS users, at least that is my own experience.

A classic example in my own case is a fear of getting needles or taking blood tests. I have fainted on many occasions when getting a blood test. Previous to using HS if I knew a week in advance that I needed to take a blood test I would start fretting, getting irritable, sleeping more, pretending it wasn't going to happen, etc. Then I would almost faint (or faint) while taking the test. Then I would need another week to recover and rejuvenate myself from the harrowing experience and all the worrying. After years of HS use I will still feel very uncomfortable about needles and I know I can get to the point where I could faint. However there is not the week of fretting leading up to the test and then the week of recovering from the ordeal. The last time I had a test was about 18 months ago and I had to lie down to take the test, the medical staff were worried about me and told me to stay there because I had turned white as a sheet. However within 1-2 minutes I felt fine got up and left. It's like once it was over it was over. I went off and had a perfectly good day and didn't really think about needles much. I don't know if you would call a fear of needles shadow material but you get the idea. I was a reasonably advanced HS meditator yet I still had/have this fear just the same, and it definitely has the feel of a shadow structure. At the same time I can be kind to myself and recognise that I am not perfect. Previously I was giving myself a hard time about being a wimp.

Another benefit of using HS is that some shadow material is always resolved through the levels so you start to become used to what it feels like to resolve issues and then evolve. Coupled with the fact that at higher evolutional levels things just start to make a lot more sense, then other techniques like counselling start to work a lot faster, as indicated by Bill. I have experienced this for myself.

I am currently looking into other complementary techniques, one of which is Zengar training (neurofeedback). The Zengar folks have found that HS and Zengar do not mix. I can see why this might be the case and this causes them to believe that HS is detrimental to personal growth (which I do not agree with). Zengar tends to stabilise and correct the CNS rather than drag it to higher levels of evolution like HS. HS probably creates a destabilised CNS in many ways just through the "rough-and-tumble" of evolving and it might appear to the Zengar system to be stopping progress. My intuition is saying that once I complete Pur lvl 4 it is time for a break and look to neurofeedback for a while to assist in stabilising the CNS (which I am equating with resolving shadow material). It feels like I need a good tidy up :) Then once things are stable in a few months/years I'll look to start the flowering levels.

Another system that I stumbled across in October is the NutriEnergetics System (NES). It is an amazing technique that uses a simple body scanning process (takes about 20 seconds) and then informational drops called Infoceuticals are prescribed to rectify human body field (HBF) imbalances. The drops take about a month to consume and you basically go into detox during that time before going along to get another scan (and the process repeats). It takes a while to slowly unfold all of the imbalances as they are layered, formed over a life time. I've done four scans and four sets of drops. The third set opened me up to a lot of anger that I was previously unaware of and was a very difficult detox. It felt very similar to the headaches I get from meditating with HS (which generally occur at about 5 weeks into a new disk for me). The reason I mention this is because I suspect that a lot of shadow material is held within different parts of the body (and the associated body field/s). NES is another way to loosen up all sorts of emotional/shadow material that has been structuralized in ego over the years (ie. the ego resides within the context a full body/mind system).

I didn't mean to start with such a long post but I feel strongly about this issue. As much as i love Bill Harris's posts they can sometimes be very detailed and difficult to understand and don't always lead you to an understanding of what approach to take next, apart from just keep using HS. I need clarity in making decisions, hence my attempt at trying to describe how I understand spiritual growth, and what other techniques could be useful within that understanding. I came from the position of being an alcoholic so I started with a lot of shadow structure, so there have been a lot of difficult times as a HS user (and that has created confusion for me at times). Holosync is a wonderful and powerful system that loosens things up and makes you grow spiritually, but I strongly believe it needs to be coupled with other techniques to get the best results (particularly if you've had a dysfunctional history). Thankfully it would seem that there are other techniques that are technologically based and minimise the need for advanced practitioners to still get amazing results.

simon