One thing that appears to be true for much longer wavelengths is that they tend to be mostly unknown to me experientially. Their long durations are such subtle currents in my experience that they are outside of my conscious perceptual range. Though this is an extreme example, the wavelength of the planet’s orbit is very, very subtle so outside my current ability to sense. But it is nevertheless there as part of my environment.
So when delving into unknown territory, what I initially sense is just an energetic, moment by moment, flow. If an insight or linguistic observation does not immediately present itself, that frequency is gone. And this is by far the majority of my experiences because my mind simply cannot keep up with naming the immensity of motion out there. But without language I have no anchor with which to easily return to any new frequency once I have dipped “myself” into it. If I am to move my identity forward on its evolutionary trajectory, at least some of these new experiences need to be graspable once discovered.
It appears to me that cognitive links are the primary mechanism that I use to for this function. Take the golden rule “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Though I may not permanently reside within the frequency that exhibits that rule as its constant natural expression, I do know that it “feels right”. So I remind myself cognitively that this is how I intend to act. It represents an ideal, or goal, whose end state is the inherent and natural exemplification of that tenet. And the practice of linguistic repetition will more often evoke that labeled frequency over time. My frequency range then includes this wavelength more often, making it more habitual for “me”.
It is important for me to generate a description for the purpose of identity anchoring to new frequencies. This can happen either by me hearing something that resonates – like Anais Nin’s “We don’t see the world as it is. We see it as we are.” – or when a frequency that’s passing through reveals a description that just comes to my mind instantaneously, as if the two were already linked.
So I want to be very clear about this. I am saying that naming, on the front edge of newly discovered frequencies (linguistic differentiation if you will), is critical to evolutionary development, at least for me. In my view, the importance of this formative process has been overlooked because of the focus of letting go on the back end; where the volume of our habitual ways of talking tends to blind us to any new or broader frequency. Language is the grounding mechanism for my “stage development”. It is the mortar that holds my “attention” on certain frequencies and ranges of frequencies. I think that it reflects what is needed to take Ken Wilber’s “state” change to a “stage” change; or permanent trait. Without it pure experience just drifts away after simply being appreciated. And though appreciation is a primordial and wonderful thing in itself, it is not in my view, evolutionary in nature. It may represent Being’s reveling in the created, but it is not reflective of Becoming doing the creating.
Another observation about longer wavelengths is that once I’ve spent some amount of time in the neighborhood in which they reside, they become relatively shorter experientially. As my frequency range widens, they end up within my “normal” operating range. What then seems like a long wavelength is one that is just beyond the new upper border of my recently expanded frequency neighborhood. And as I become tuned to those longer wavelengths, the shorter ones begin to reveal themselves, as they are now visible in contrast to the longer. Not only are the shorter frequencies revealed, so are their language anchors and any behaviors that were formed in association with them. Remarks that may have an undertone of reprimand or scorn, for example, are revealed in noticing the frequency of the undertone on which they ride. The behaviors may also show up for me first, as they are not in harmony with the newly revealed perspective.
Inquiry alone can also reveal these links since it rises out of “I don’t know”, which, at least momentarily, releases the natural attachment of the language link to its associated frequency. So what is revealed occurs both in language and in frequency at the discovery end, by creating associations for the new, and at the letting go end, by releasing attachments to the old.
Now this is a bit different for the infant. An infant gets trained on grounding its identity but none in letting go. Why should it? It is initially unanchored from any cognitive pattern in our bandwidth range. It is flowing freely in the frequency soup, lapping up all of its experiential splendors. But it is also trying to get focused here. It’s assessment of perfection and creative choices can come only after it has scouted out the territory and tuned itself to it. You can’t let go of something that you have not yet distinguished so babies have no need for that “letting go” function. Babies must get grounded here by first naming the contents of the world around them, at a minimum physically and psychologically.
Here’s another important feature of language, creativity. Going back to the intent of Becoming, neither the infant nor I can create our next most perfect experienceable world without language, at least here. It is the glorious creative mechanism with which I bring my personal preferences into “reality” via choice. So I need language both to hold in place a description of myself as relatively solid, assess my world from that solid-ish place, then use that semi-stable platform to choose what I want to have/do in the world and execute the actions to have that happen.
Many spiritual traditions, yoga being one, are not about creating so much as they are about letting go. Not resisting anything; allowing things to exist as they are. And I think that the letting go practices are critical, because we get so locked in to the language anchors of our identities that we get blinded by the shear mass and proximity of our most familiar frequencies and their anchoring words. Further, the longer wavelengths are not visible due to the incessant high frequency buzzing of what we’ve already created. The entangled nature of these language anchors tends to keep our attention focused within a certain frequency range. But we cannot be so focused on silencing the mind that we, at least I, cannot both create a new world through choices and anchor those newly discovered frequencies by describing them in language. These new longer wavelengths guide my evolutionary view, which then reveals to me what is “most perfect” for my world from that new broader perspective.
I want to go back to an idea that I expressed in an earlier post. That is, the notion that frequencies generate a gravitational pull and that the more attention given, the more gravity is generated. If you take all of the language anchors that you have, and bundle them into a package, you have a range or general field of gravitation, born of thought form, which I am calling my “frequency neighborhood”, or colloquially “me”. A majority of the time, though not all, my attention tends to remain within that range.
So I am seeing my own spiritual evolution as an active process at both ends of the experiential spectrum that I currently have access to. The “glacial pace” of my evolution continues by virtue of creating linguistic associations on the front end (for new longer wavelengths), and disengaging the associated ones at the back end (from relatively shorter wavelengths). And what gets added into the linguistic associations can be, and I say should be, a broader context, which can hold the entire frequency neighborhood together (Wilber’s AQAL model would be one binding agent of such a structure). This process slowly moves my frequency neighborhood forward. It appears to me that the right brain (at least what is generally attributed to the right brain) is for unencumbered exploration, and the left for grounding; and this back and forth balancing is needed for my healthy forward motion. So as I see it, dismissing or demeaning the ego, the mind or concepts is denying a vital component of the growth cycle. And as we all have heard, what we resist persists.