Something extraordinary happened in 2020. COVID hit around the world and at the time we were doing direct brain stimulation lab research. Essentially working on a push button solution to help people reach Fundamental Wellbeing. All of a sudden, we found ourselves sitting at home like everyone else.

For seven years we’d been conducting research with a 4-month protocol that transitioned about 70% of people who used it to Fundamental Wellbeing. We’d used that protocol on well over a thousand people to track what changed as and after they transitioned.

That protocol had a secret, however. We knew that 60% of that 70% of people transitioned from a smaller subset of that protocol, and for years we’d been wanting to test that as a protocol in its own right. Suddenly, we had nothing but time, so we set up our first experiment to do just that.

Since then, as this is being written, we’ve had about 2,500 people use this shorter protocol with a high level of success. We’re used to our protocols safely, reliably, and rapidly transitioning people, so it was nice to have a shorter 6-week protocol we could use — but something else that was amazing came from this period that was totally unexpected.

These experiments were much more accessible than our previous ones. They took a lot less time, and people were sitting at home with nothing but time on their hands. So as many people used this protocol in one year as used our longer and more intensive protocol in the 7 previous years that it had been available.

Our longer protocol took a lot of time and dedication, so the people who took that program were generally the most die-hard of seekers. This protocol was much easier to do, so a wider demographic of seekers took it, often just for the heck of it to see if it would do anything.

Here’s where it gets interesting. When we measured the people who came into these the early cohorts of this experiment, nearly half of them were ALREADY in Fundamental Wellbeing – many just didn’t know it! The education we provided as part of the protocol made them realize it. Most were absolutely stunned!

Many of these individuals had been long term seekers. They had practiced many different techniques, often off and on for years. At some point, they had transitioned — but not noticed.

Now, you might be asking yourself how that’s possible! For us, it’s a well known phenomenon. We’d had many research subjects over the years tell us that it took them a while before they realized that they’d transitioned. And, we’d seen it in our own experiments. There were many times where our data very clearly told us that someone had transitioned, and other Finders around the person noticed it, but the person him or herself did not seem to.

You see, most people are looking for some sort of powerful or overwhelming transition to Fundamental Wellbeing. Some kind of night and day experience. The reason for this is that it’s what’s often written and spoken about by spiritual teachers, authors, and other influencers.

But, our data showed us very early on that these types of experiences were in the minority. Here’s the hitch, though. The people who have them are more likely to shift their lives and become teachers, authors, and so on. So the marketplace of ideas is biased towards their type of transition experience, even though it’s actually in the minority.

Most people who are trying to transition to Fundamental Wellbeing using things like meditation or prayer have quite gentle transitions. So gentle, that they can be missed. What often happens is that these practices raise the people’s wellbeing over time, prior to their transition. By the time the transition comes there isn’t enough of shift for them to notice.

I know that may sound incredible, but even world renowned experts and famous teachers and authors related this from their own experience. One long time practitioner and teacher, someone responsible for the transition of over a thousand other people, told us that he didn’t notice his own transition at first. One day a couple of weeks after he assumes it happened, he was standing in the street talking to someone else about what to be on the lookout for regarding Fundamental Wellbeing, and as he described each item he realized that he was actually experiencing it! That’s how this highly recognized and experienced expert with decades of background in this came to realize his own transition!

People can also be from a specific tradition that gives them a set of markers to look for in their own experience. Sometimes, those markers are based on just one person’s experience. In those circumstances few if any in their system ever reach the same “level” or “type” of Fundamental Wellbeing that the original person did. In other words, they don’t have the same experience.

Of course, that’s exactly what one would expect. Everyone has a different nervous system. The odds of having the exact same experience in the exact same way as another person is incredibly unlikely.

Historically this situation produced a wide range of sects within religious and spiritual traditions that focus on Fundamental Wellbeing, with corresponding disputes about what is “right” that often carry on to this day.

These traditions can also bring other issues related to this. The reality that most academic scholars acknowledge is that it is virtually impossible to know what someone was referring to in their lived experience hundreds or thousands of years ago. The languages are mostly dead or substantially changed, the contextual meaning from the culture of their day inaccessible, and so on.

Scholars often demonstrate that we often misinterpret American texts that are written in English from just 100 or so years ago. Those are materials that are written in our language, from an older part of our own culture and yet we can barely grasp their meaning. The culture they were written in is, in reality, long gone and unless someone does a Ph.D. to try to go back and gain an understanding of it, it’s nearly hopeless.

So, it’s not surprising that this is, even more, the case involving religious and spiritual texts talking about the phenomenology of Fundamental Wellbeing, and what someone should be on the lookout for. Nonetheless, what often happens is that someone falls into this or that sect or school of ideas, and spends their time simply looking in the wrong direction. The result is that they typically fail to realize when they have actually transitioned.

We’ve seen this enough over the years to realize that it is a common occurrence, but what we didn’t realize until this year are the wider implications. We’re now wondering just how many people in the so-called “seeker” community are actually Finders and don’t know it. And, we suspect that it is a lot more people than have ever been thought possible before. We’ve started a new research project to try to find out.

Part of that involves a simple survey people can take, as well as educational materials that help individuals to better reflect on their inner experience and figure it out for themselves. The initial version of the survey is available here . If you’ve got some meditation or related experience under your belt, you should probably check it out. The reality is that you might already be a Finder, and not know it.

One thing our material seems to do is help people lift the veil and see it. We think that there’s a simple reason for that, and it’s covered in Myth #3.