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Ben L. Callif

Goodreads Author

Genre

Science, Philosophy, Psychology

Member Since

August 2017

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Ben Callif has been spellbound by the paradoxes of consciousness for as long as he can remember. His overactive intellect was occupied through his formative years by questions like “why am I me and not you?” or “what makes a person do what they do?” He spent his school days chasing these lines of inquiry rather than participating in class. He spent his nights in the library reading about esoteric topics like quantum physics and ethics instead of doing his homework. By the time he was in high school his grades were suffering; he was a classic example of ‘failure through boredom.’

Thanks to the compassion of his parents and a few supportive teachers he dropped out of high school to homeschool himself. He used his academic freedom to dive into Ben Callif has been spellbound by the paradoxes of consciousness for as long as he can remember. His overactive intellect was occupied through his formative years by questions like “why am I me and not you?” or “what makes a person do what they do?” He spent his school days chasing these lines of inquiry rather than participating in class. He spent his nights in the library reading about esoteric topics like quantum physics and ethics instead of doing his homework. By the time he was in high school his grades were suffering; he was a classic example of ‘failure through boredom.’

Thanks to the compassion of his parents and a few supportive teachers he dropped out of high school to homeschool himself. He used his academic freedom to dive into the depths of philosophy and psychology and achieved his first Bachelor of Science degree at 18 years old. After a brief stint in a Clinical Psychology graduate program, he realized that he was too introverted to deal with people all day. So he decided to approach the problem of consciousness from a more scientific angle. He went back and got another Bachelor of Science degree in Cellular and Molecular Biology, then got accepted into a Neuroscience Ph.D. program.

Halfway through his Ph.D. Ben’s grandmother fell ill with the rare, incurable, and invariably deadly Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Her death changed everything for him—it was like he had opened eyes for the first time. In life, she was everything that he wasn’t, and he was suddenly aware of how incomplete he was up to that point. He left his Ph.D. program with a Master of Science degree and over the course of 6 months he gave over 1000 Lyft rides while he built a neuroholistic life coaching business. He honed his interpersonal skills, practiced his intuition, and balanced his overly developed intellect with empathy. For the first time, he saw the paradox of consciousness as an opportunity rather than a problem.

After hundreds of hours of one-on-one coaching with a diverse group of clients, Ben decided to seek something more hands-on and scalable. He found himself in a network of nonprofit leaders and was offered a job as a Research & Mindset Director for Bader Philanthropies, Inc. He published his first book, Organumics, as a way to integrate his work in a scientific paradigm that is cold, calculating, and logically coherent, with his newfound sense of purpose that is visceral, mysterious, and emotionally fulfilling. Since then, he's become a certified facilitator with the Arbinger Institute, training and guiding local organizations to become more effective, self-reflective, and connected. ...more