The Mind

The Impact of Completion and Incompletion

Choices are typically made for some end, which is ultimately some form of perceived perfection – a more beautiful (better or perfect) state – which can then be appreciated. It is, as I have said, our nature to create and appreciate. If that cycle is completed, one is left fulfilled at the level at which a choice was made. Choosing to open the refrigerator is still a choice, requiring intent and action, but its completion does not really register in our conscious attention as satisfying since it is commonplace within our conscious frequency range. A knock on the door may defer that action but altering any of our minor choices with another choice does not seem to leave any energetic residue. But choices are associated with frequencies and so, like frequencies, exist at varying energetic levels. Some take more focused and longer term attention so the energetic impact is more impactful.

Some people get a college degree and realize that some very different career calls them and the degree’s focus is dropped without regret. It was a long term goal but the choice to leave it behind seems pretty clean. This example of completion is consciously choosing to no longer pursue the intended outcome.

Another example of dealing with a choice is to ignore it, deny it or put it on the “back burner”. With this in-action, it is my experience that the intention hangs out until it is brought to some conscious conclusion. Given the varying amounts of energy applied to goals, some will pester you consciously, like “I really need to get that done”, and some lie in the background unattended, like wanting to be a doctor when you were a kid (yes, it’s still there). But all require some degree of energy to hold them in place. The mind was given a command and until another one alters that energy, it lives on awaiting completion of the “choice-appreciation” cycle. I think that a fair amount of the energetic clutter that flows in and out of our minds is a result of incompletions waiting for an opening to remind to us of the desire we once had to have them be fulfilled. The mind is a perfectly oiled machine and it does everything that we ask. All requests lie in wait until their “completion and appreciation” cycle is done, even if some intentions are contradictory.

The WE

Lost and Found

How often do you find yourself deviating from a particular task due to something fascinating distracting your attention? Often, I’ll guess, is the answer. It could be as simple as stopping to greet an excited puppy while walking to the store and chatting for a while with its owner. Sometimes one thing of interest leads to another and you’ll soon be putting off your original task to pursue the other. If, for instance, the distraction is a charming human being, it could change the course of your life.

This may just be how each of “us” got here in the first place. If, as I proposed in Choice and Appreciation, this “I” is at the end of a very long stream of choices, then it seems to me that the only reason that a distinctive identity even exists is due to a choice made by an upstream perspective that is still very much “me” (my collective stream) and that choice still lies in my lineage.

In my Post “In the Beginning” I wondered about my energetic experience that perhaps any given “I” is just a transitory expression of a set of perspectives that comes together in a particular moment. Another way of saying this is that whatever comes out of my mouth is a singular expression (an I) of an experiential state that reflects a set of collected perspectives at one particular moment in time.

452_mouseDTI

Perhaps, like our distracted selves, one particular focal point followed its curiosity and went traipsing off to pursue something of interest or to create something it had imagined. It is still tethered to the connections of its source [its collection of perspectives, its We]. They are still there but the awareness of their existence is muted by its attentiveness to its current pursuit. How does it find its way back to the conscious awareness of its “clan” and does it need to?

Language

Language and Frequencies

I did the “est Training” in the summer of 1975 and participated in their programs (now Landmark Education) on and off for decades. Though these programs have enriched my life beyond description, for this moment, I just want to present an idea that I got there.

In one course that I did, the leader stated, “without language reality doesn’t exist”. I loved the feel of that since my frequency soup is, in its essence, experienced without words. I called my father to talk to him about what I’d seen in the course. The way that I phrased this point to him was, “I learned how much language has to do with the way that I see the world”. His response, verbatim, was “Well of course, without language reality doesn’t exist. I wrote a paper on that once, would you like to read it?” Uhhhh, yeah. Just seeing him as my dad, I’d forgotten that he was a linguist.

The WE

I Am Alone, or Not

We come into this world as infants who surely seem more merged with deeper aspects of Being, or whatever you’d like to call it, than those who have been here a while. It takes time for us to train our attention consistently to this particular physical environment. Somewhere during that process we achieve a benchmark level of, at least perceived, separation.

When I was 6 my we moved into a larger house in a new neighborhood closer to the university where my father worked. It was full of children. After a week or so, I don’t really remember, I went to my mother and said “I don’t think that there is anyone in the neighborhood my age”. She said, “Well, Christine Daley is about your age”. In that instant I realized that she’d known that there was no one my age and had kept that from me. In my little mind I thought that if I couldn’t trust her to be honest with me, I was really alone in the world. That declaration, in that silent moment, made it effectively so. Many decades later I remembered this event at some Landmark course where they were specifically looking for such a “break in belonging”. I went to share what I’d seen with my mother and before I was even done she said, “I remember that. I regretted it the moment that I said it but it was too late”. Even she saw the impact that it had on me and remembered it all those years later.

It seems to me that at least one component of the process of being trained to be in this physical world comes in some form of a declaration that “I am alone”. It may be “nobody loves me, I’m not good enough, I don’t fit in” but is something along those lines. The “I”, in that moment of declared separateness, realizes that it must take responsibility for its choices as a solitary individuated entity. If it is going to survive in this world – to get what it needs and wants – it’s got to take charge and make it happen since it cannot guarantee the same resolve from anyone else. Given that on some level that each of us does have to make our own way, it makes sense that we do have to come to that declared state at some point.

Choice, The Mind

Choice, One Source of Shadow

In the piece “Choice and Appreciation” I proposed the possibility that there is a flow of choices all the way from the “big bang” to my moment-by-moment choices right now. From an energetic perspective, that means that every single choice upstream has some impact on the energy that is represented as me, since I am sourced by the entirety of that stream.

I’ll return to my “Siemens” analogy about levels of awareness. Choices made upstream always will have some impact downstream. Those upstream choices will impact a wider array of downstream people and processes in their organization but typically at a more subtle level. Upstream choices are reflected in me primarily as moods, ways of being, tendencies, worldview, and the like. They can act like an overarching steering mechanism. They obviously are experienced, but I tend to be most aware of them when I’m not actively engaged in anything. What is most visibly impactful are the choices made with clear and present attention. Conscious choices will most often override upstream intent because, as I’ve pointed out, downstream shorter wavelengths tend to mask the longer ones. You’re not likely to be thinking about your overall commitment to life while you’re zipping down a mountainside on a snowboard or trying to put a squirming child into a car seat. Though your overall commitment is reflected in your individual choices here, making an impact in this world still requires taking action within these local frequency levels where it can be experienced and appreciated.

Polarities

Certainty and Freedom

I think that when anyone has an insight, on almost any topic, that very state of insight has as its natural energy, the space of simple certainty; a sense of knowing. This is, I believe, indicative of thoughts that appear when tapping into any of the longer energetic wavelengths. An insight shared from that deep space carries with it a solid sense of certainty. As I experience them, longer wavelengths live in the background and thus are the relatively stable canvas on which my everyday experiences are alighted. So when a new insight is tapped from that wider field and expressed, the listener may feel the impact of the words landing as fact. Declared facts, by their nature, eliminate options contradictory to the stated position so can be experienced as restrictive to the listener. Just as when you are fully focused on some task, everything outside of that area of focused attention disappears from your experience. Certainty pushes alternate frequencies/perspectives to the sideline.

Now one of the most fundament aspects of Being, is freedom. Being is unencumbered at its origin. I think that most would agree that at Being’s deepest level absolute freedom is one of its fundamental attributes. And since it lies there in our depths, it is one of our fundamental attributes too. Thus anything we experience as impinging on that absolute freedom can evoke a dissonance that can reverberate downstream from the natural depth at which our boundlessness resides.

Uncategorized

It’s Not Easy Being Green

A Kermit reference, not a meme

As a very young child I occasionally had the experience of a vortex pulling me down into complete loneliness and isolation. It felt very much to me like water going down a drain. At the very bottom of that oppressive well I would occasionally drop into complete silence, which was a refuge of sorts for me. The problem was that the world always called me out of that place and its doorstep was just as painful on the way out as it was on the way in. But at some distance away, where the gravity was not so strong, there was a space of melancholy that I was very comfortable in. I didn’t mind hanging out there despite the fact that I was still alone. It also served very well with the few friends that I had. Listening to people from that place seemed to comfort them and that way of connecting did mitigate, very briefly, the loneliness of my perceived isolation.

When I was about 7, I started wanting to be 60. That was retirement age then and I didn’t think that I could make it through what was looking to be a very long life. I remember waking up mornings wondering how I was going to make it through another day. The way that I experienced time back then, my days seemed eternal. Moment by moment dragged on, one after another, at what seemed an endless pace. My only respite was to stay as busy as possible, which would bypass the time-sense temporarily. But another issue was that in experiencing time in that moment-by-moment fashion, remembering things over longer intervals was often not easy. I’d read a story at school and felt a visceral sense of what the characters had experienced but most of the details that I was queried about afterwards did not stay with me. I’d keep having to refer back to the text for answers, which did not typically allow me to get the work done in the allotted time. This had me thinking that I may not even be able to adequately function in life even if I could endure the experiential eon that it would take to get to 60.

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