Craig Moore

The human brain didn't physically change over the past thousands of years...what changed was our "software." And shamans were the first programmers. They installed a "software update" that transformed how we think and solve problems. Through ritual practices, like... • Sleep deprivation • Intense rhythmic activities (like dancing) • Social isolation • Psychedelics ...they disrupted ordinary thought patterns to break mental frames. But why did they want to break mental frames? Because your brain is incredible at pattern recognition But this superpower has a dark side: Once you see a pattern, it becomes incredibly hard to "unsee" it. You become trapped in your own mental models. Here is an example: In the "Nine Dot Problem“ people fail because they imagine an invisible box around the dots. Even when told to "think outside the box," they can't solve it. The frame becomes a prison. This reveals something crucial: The art of systematically breaking patterns to see reality anew. Being told to "be innovative" or "think differently" isn't enough, you need practical techniques to disrupt your normal patterns of thinking. This is what shamans understood intuitively thousands of years ago. When a shaman would "become" an animal, they were accessing a deeper form of understanding (moving beyond mere knowledge) to embodied wisdom. This is how they solved impossible problems their communities faced. Think of shamanism as one of the first psychotechnologies: Like literacy or meditation, it’s a cognitive tool that expands your mental capacities. By shifting consciousness, shamans brought new insights and ways of understanding the world...