Embracing a New Science
for an Emerging Universe

   Imagine working 50 years and knowing now is the time to bring your work into the world because now is when it is needed and people are now ready to hear the message. That is exactly what Norm and Skye Hirst are facing.

   The intention of this column is to tell the stories of people who are using their wisdom, skills, talents and creativity in new ways that will serve the evolving, awakening or simply new human on his and her journey. Simply put, people who are working to help us make, or co-create, a better world for ourselves. Norm and Skye Hirst most definitely mesh with my idea of 21st Century Bohemians.

   Now, imagine you are a columnist trying to understand a science so vast it is 50 years in discovery, so new it does not yet have a common language and it flies in the face of long standing beliefs. That is what this columnist is facing.

It Began Simply Enough

   I recently phoned Norm and Skye being that we are practically neighbors and columnists for the same journal. Within minutes we decided to place a call to our editor saying we wanted to work together on a piece about the Hartman Values Inventory – a tool key to their work that could serve me.

   Visiting the Hirsts in their Camden home is like traveling to the land of possibilities. Emily Dickinson would nestle in quite happily here and she’d like the view of the harbor too, especially since she didn’t get out much. In fact, after spending many hours with Norm and Skye over several days, I found myself wondering if they would adopt me!

   At their home, I mentioned a recent round of professional doors being closed on me. “Maybe you are going after work that is too small,” Skye says succinctly, exhibiting her quick, razor sharp ability to cut through the fray. What she says resonates deep within me. Soon, I would come to learn that “sense of knowing” was being experienced in the intrinsic dimension.

   Which brings us back to The Hartman. A simple test where you rank 18 items each in two categories that show how you view the world and how you view yourself; how you use a set of principles of intrinsic, extrinsic and systemic value dimensions. A process we apply continuously as we make choices and decisions, take action and implement plans. It is how we choose which brand of peanut butter to buy and even, how we select a mate.

A Life’s Work

   Norm began his work at MIT as a physicist, mathematician and process philosopher seeking the role of values in today’s science, and finding none, he knew we needed a new science. Skye did her Ph.D. work in communications and works as a consultant and coach. Value organizing principles are key in their daily work and research.

   “Fifty years ago, I realized we did not understand values. I knew physics was not going to solve the problem. I met Hartman who discovered this natural law and created a new definition of values.  Values exist only in living process and this is what I needed to solve,” explained Norm.

   While at the University of Texas at Austin in 1966 Norm recalls waking up one morning with the feeling that he wasn’t supposed to go to class and immediately getting into a tussle with his thinking mind that was saying, “You have to go to class.”  Ultimately, Norm decided to heed the intrinsic and stay put. Staying home kept him out of the line of fire of a student sniper who would kill 14 people and wound 31 others.

   The work that consumes the life of Norm and Skye is what they call a New Science of Life Itself. This science states that everything that is alive, including a human, is organism. “The human is a living organism, liquid crystalline in structure. We carry within us deeply embedded intelligence. Life is creative energy. All life is energy flows in our body; studying our bodies solely as matter cannot explain life,” explains Norm.

   And here’s the kicker – “Life doesn’t work anything like we thought before,” said Norm.  

Meeting with the Minds

   As we continued to meet, their work began to make sense to me, or so I thought. Even so, I knew could not write about it cohesively. This was a scenario for the good old Q&A format of journalism – a safety net.

   In the meantime, there was my Hartman. I sat in Skye’s office as she calculated my test results. Norm joined us. Skye continued marking away with her pencil, calling out to Norm a couple times. “She’s got an 8 extrinsic in how she views the world. She’s a 12 intrinsic, evenly split with 6 and 6,” she called over her shoulder. This got Norm’s attention. Peering at my scores he declared “You’re hired!”

   My Hartman Values Profile shows I am well balanced in how I apply values across the three dimensions. There were no glaring blind spots that the test often uncovers. That was the good news. The bad news? Because I can see all three dimensions pretty much with the same clarity, to improve my abilities I would need to work on all three dimensions, for a better quality of life.

   The test validated what Skye had honed in on when I described the doors that had been closing in my life. I was encountering a plethora of systemic behavior from others that was sending me into a systemic tailspin of my own – which caused me to be very hard on myself. I was “shoulding” all over myself, scrambling to create rules and roles that would help me to better fit into someone else’s idea of what they thought I should be.

   The idea I have that acquiring a master’s degree in fine arts (which has evolved into the chic new degree, a position once held by the M.B.A.) is necessary for me to teach at the university level and to publish that shelf full of books I envision, is entrenched in the systemic and extrinsic dimensions, the Hirsts explained. A good example of how I limit myself.

   “Have to, ought to, got to, should have. I refer to them as the HOGS,” Skye said. “Life gets stressful and causes anxiety when the HOGS come out.”

   Living from this place, Norm explains, is inverting natural law of values processing. When we listen or feel connected to the intrinsic, live from there and allow the extrinsic and systemic to fall in line, our lives harmonize in concert to fulfill our potential.

Simple Questions

   A few days later, the humble journalist and the two geniuses, gathered together to do “the” interview. I dove into my list of 25 questions.

   The water got deep real fast. The answers to what I thought were simple questions went on and on. Their answers would never fit into the space allotted. Suddenly, I felt like Charlie Brown listening to a teacher who sounded like she was talking while wearing a goldfish bowl on her head. I thought about Carl Sagan’s often heard quote during my formative years about the cosmos’ “billions and billions.” I felt like I was drowning.

   We abandoned Plan A and moved onto Plan B. Skye would interview me! She would ask me about my experience taking The Hartman and my understanding of how I could integrate it into my life, along with my impressions of their theory of the new science.

   That all sounded fine, until I realized that I would then become the story. Hold everything! I am not one of those television journalists who enjoys doing what scares me most or anything that would make me look ridiculous, in public. My own closest friends have heard me say “My life is not a reality show.” I am a firm believer that too much information, really is.

   Despite my reservations, I decided to throw caution to the wind and proceed. I was willing if it would help my readers understand how the enormity and brilliance of Norm and Skye’s work could help improve life for all of us. This was a “feeling sense,” another example of living in the intrinsic.

   Skye started in with the questions. All the things I had begun to learn from them morphed into one giant ball of unintelligible ideas. No longer could I pull one out and formulate a sentence. Now I sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher.

   We sat there, flummoxed, looking from one to the other. All the big intangibles of their theory circled their wagons in my small little mind and conjured up a big headache.

   Through all of this Norm sat, adorable and exhibiting patience as infinite as the possibilities that could be uncovered by The Hartman. The humble genius telling me how he flunked his first physics test at MIT. Distraught, he went to the professor who told him to keep at it and that if he aced the final he’d get an A for the course. And that is exactly what happened. I shouldn’t be upset, he said, “It took me 50 years to understand it all.”

   I left their home feeling as if I had failed all of us. On my way home, a sense of relief flooded me and I suddenly knew I could not just drop it all. Once home, Skye called and said, “Teresa I want to tell you something and I hope you can hear it. When we start telling people about what we do, most start shaking their heads, not able to understand. One time I sat down with a journalist, said three sentences and she said her head hurt.

Sleep on It

   I was dealing with very heady stuff that seemed too big for my brain to wrap around. A thought occurred to me. Perhaps I could wrap my arms around it, instead of my brain, and let it nurture me.

   Mentally exhausted, my head still in recovery mode, I decided to turn this dilemma over to that circus troupe of egoless selves that cavort as we slumber.

   The next morning an email from my editor Joan Emmons read, “I appreciate your willingness to play with this for yourself, I feel that it will certainly enrich your life in many ways. Keep me in touch and please find the joy in connecting with the limitations and knowing them, rather than being upset. It’s all growth and at the end of the journey that’s what will matter.”

   Breaking through the limitations we place on ourselves and allow others to impose on us are challenges we must process to transform and grow. Learning so many new ideas and theories from Norm and Skye had sent me into deep process – a simple example of the challenges we are all facing on a grand scale during the current evolution of human civilization.

   I remembered Skye saying how as we each begin facing the emerging realities, it will feel deeply confounding until we let go and feel our way with the rudder of the intrinsic to guide us.

   “What you are experiencing is exactly what is happening to most people in the world today. Everybody, everything is coming into question. How we think of reality is coming into question,” said Skye.

   Emerging from my processing mode and faced with a deadline, I stared my systemic limitations down and invited my higher intrinsic self to the desk, called upon the practicality of my extrinsic talents and began. And so my dear reader, if all of this makes no sense to you and makes your head hurt, my apologies but that’s to be expected. I hope you will stick with it. Take two aspirin, sleep on it and if all this still doesn’t make sense in the morning, call me. I’ll give you Norm and Skye’s phone number.

© 2008 Teresa Piccari

   Teresa Piccari is a writer and teacher living in coastal Maine. She is the proprietor of The Village Scribe, a professional writing service, meeting professional and everyday needs. She teaches workshops including creative writing, memoir and journaling. She is a traditional Usui Reiki Master who practices and teaches the ancient healing art. Her business and practice are located at The Wellness Center, 71 Elm St., in Camden. Contact Teresa at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or (207) 344-7070.