Finding “Other”
As a newborn, you have no distinctions of this world. All around you is a colorful, noisy mess of a constantly changing kaleidoscope of perception.
We first begin to know ourselves through experiences of pain and separation: ripped out of the warmth of the womb, cut off from our feeding line, spanked into taking our first breath.
A little later, happily feeding, and while we are still hungry, mom removes her breast before we are done. MMMmmmmaa, the first sound babies are capable of making evolves as an attempted command to that thing that feeds us. She might or might not come back, but in either case, we suddenly realize, she is separate from us…
Then we hit our head against a table: “ouch THAT hurt me… I would not hurt myself… THAT must be separate…”
Slowly the child begins to realize itself as separate from the world that surrounds it. And through expressions, first clumsy sounds, then words, we learn to distinguish what is what in our environment, and what we can and can’t control through our expression. And realize that there is an expression for us, our name. Then “ME” dawns… Welcome to the terrible two’s…
From here on out, we are continuing to learn distinctions, words, expressions for that which we encounter. First mostly through our parents, than through other children, teachers, media and our entire cultural environment.
Distinctions create actuality
One could go even further and daresay they create your reality. It is through our distinctions that we experience that which appears to be around us. Our mechanism of perception acts similar to a sonar. We receive data into our eyes, we evaluate concepts and determine distinctions, which we then “perceive” in our environment. Reality only occurs in our imagination. Our distinctions are the paint we apply to the canvas of our experience.
We learn distinctions
Distinctions are learned. Some are conditioned (e.g. most of the distinctions you learned in school were hammered in through a constant process of repetition), some are imprinted, which means they sit on a much deeper level and were created under states of neuroplasticity, or imprint vulnerability, the state of a newborn, and later through experiences such as fear, orgasm, or other trance states. They require special care if they need to be addressed.
We learn distinctions on multiple levels – physical, emotional, mental. Each manifest differently:
Physical level – Relationship to body
Babies spend hours delighting in their bodies. Few things are as much fun as to watch a baby giggling in joy at the sight of its own hands. Our body is also the root of our first experiences of pain and negative physical sensations like hunger, indigestion, teething etc. Our earliest imprints and distinctions around “Other” have to do with how we relate to our body, the first “Other” we encounter in relation to our primary point of perception, our sense of “I”.
Emotional Level – Relationship to emotion
As we begin to begin our explorations into space at the onset of mobility, we create imprints and conditioning around which distinctions fall into like and not like. We crawl towards mommy and daddy where we feel we “belong”, and are taught to stay away from strangers. We learn to move toward that which we like, and avoid that which we don’t. Within that, we inherit our parental and societal biases associated with distinctions e.g. around sub groubs of society, and prepare ourselves for our future choice of sexual partners.
Mental Level – Relationship to thought
Mental distinctions come in the form of words. And as we begin to learn words, we also learn about the persistence of objects. Peekaboo represents the child’s learning that distinctions exist across time. Once “I” learned words for things, “I” can ask “Where did __________ go?”, if I am not perceiving the things directly. Giving words to emotional experiences results in the ability to strategize based on past and into the future. “Good” and “bad”, initially felt as immediate sensations, turn into morality, and rationalization thereof results in subsets of beliefs and the beliefs of “Others”.
“Other” dances with “I”
When you find “I” again (we tend to get lost in identity attachments in the three levels described above), you are now aware that nothing and everything else is “Other”, and that you can learn more distinctions, refine your likes and not likes, and utilizes strategies around maximizing your physical pleasures while reducing occurrences of physical pain – for “I” and – the more you expand – for “Other” through your actions.
“Other” becomes a dance in which you have two options: fear (enforce separation) or love (overcome separation).
Fear!
Fear enforces the distinctions. Ask yourself how this supports you in your experience of “I”. Sometimes separation is required, sometimes it hinders. Ask youself: Does it make your feel better about who you are? How is it working for you to be separate from what is going on? What are the distinctions you are drawing? Where did they originate? Are they yours?
Or there is love…
“Love”, a much overused term, can be defined as understanding self beyond the boundaries of “I”. Distinctions to create more separation can be drawn ad infinitum, and they can be helpful to communicate subtleties. When you simply are with “Other”, there is no need to communicate (which occurs between two separate entities), since you are in communion, and at that point, distinctions disappear and you integrate ad infinitum, until you are beyond even part and parcel of everything. Love is that which bridges distinctions.
So, when you encounter “Other”, ask yourself: Why is “Other” in my life? Why is it “Other”? Whose distinction is that? And then, once you decided, ask yourself: How can I create the most benefit for “Other” right now?
We are all here to lovingly dance with each “Other”, after all, right? 
Finding “I”
Apart from the collection of identities who make up YOU, there are also a variety of different circuits that make up your consciousness. Each has its own function and evolutionary history. Each has its strengths, and in each we run programs that might or might not serve us.
Levels of Consciousness
Alfred Count Korzybski is one of the neglected brilliant minds of the last century, his work leading to the theory of general semantics, and also covering the curious question of consciousness. According to Korzybski, he observed three primary levels of consciousness at work on this planet:
- Chemical Binders – Plants - Physical intelligence that utilizes chemical elements for communication, processes inputs like light and water, and creates plant life. It corresponds to the intelligence of your body.
- Space Binders – Animals - Emotional intelligence and emotional territorial consciousness, the ability to move toward that which you “like” and away from that you don’t like, and to know what’s what. In addition to that the ability to know how to create emotional states in others.
- Time Binders – Humans - Mental intelligence. Through assigning agreed upon symbols to the world around us (language), we create persistence of objects and the notion of a continued experience of self.
The levels are not a hierarchy, but a holarchy, meaning, there is no better or worse, but they continue to add to each other, e.g. an animal also has physical consciousness, a human has physical, emotional and mental consciousness.
Charlie cut my finger
Really, he didn’t. But cutting your finger is a good example to make the above a bit more personal. Imagine you cut yourself in your finger. Your physical consciousness is freaking out at the violation, it’s rushing white blood cells to the area and attempting to figure out how to deal with the breach in the hull and contain infection. If you were only in our physical consciousness, you would probably go into shock and overwhelm and pass out.
If you were only in your emotional consciousness, you would experience, based on your operating system, an emotional freakout in the form of “Oh my G-d, I cut myself, how horrible, poor me!” or “Stupid #%^#%! &%*@$%!”.
As you shift into your rational, mental body, you figure, it would be a good idea to get a band aid and stop the bleeding.
You have probably met people that are not able to shift between the different levels of consciousness. I know people who will pass out at the sight of blood – especially their own. I also have observed people running around the room screaming in self-deprecation and anger. And I have met people that take this situation totally calm, do what is rational, and hardly notice that there are experiences on these other levels.
Who is the Observer?
If we look at our example above and what happened in the shifting process, there seems to be a fourth level of consciousness at play. The one, who realizes all the other three, and chooses the appropriate course of action. What level of consciousness is that?
Delicious Brains!
The first three circuits of consciousness can be mapped to corresponding brain functions. In a way, we have three very different brains:
- Our brain stem – our “reptilian” brain, the oldest part of our brain, regulates all the basics and can be associated with physical intelligence
- Our limbic system – controls our emotions and has centers for bliss and violence, which tend to activate each other through induction currents if one gets too excited
- Our neo-cortex – the most “human” part, where we process all the higher human symbolic functions
But where is our 4th brain? The one that is observing the other three and that makes distinctions between their respective experiences?
Is there a 4th brain?
There is a new level of consciousness we are developing as inhabitants of this planet. Acting on the third, the mental body, the age of reason, and ultimately the information age has created a new opportunity for awareness. While many still think reason is our highest capacity, we can also easily observe how many people fall short of it every day. And if we assume that rational mind is the highest human capacity, it also makes sense to allow machines to run our lives (as in Jean-Luc Goddard’s “Alphaville”, or more recently “The Matrix”) – welcome Singularity! Resistance is futile.
The new level of awareness were triggered by a variety of factors from technology that allows us to see to the other end of the world and keeps us from ignoring what is happening there, to pictures of the earth from space, which made us aware of the fact that we are on one planet together, and that there is only one human species.
Grokking I-other
In order to have a distinct sense of self, beyond the physical, emotional or mental experience, invites a true center point of “I”, which then uses our three different bodies as interfaces into the reality we are experiencing. But you are not the interface and able to hold “I” without being overwhelmed by the fact that this means EVERYTHING ELSE is “OTHER”.
Where angels fear to tread…
It’s a frightening place to go. It’s the place where you accept that as soon as you say “I” you are completely alone. It’s a dark place. An empty place where you realize that nothing has inherent meaning and that all meaning comes from you. It is a place where you take full responsibility for all of the reality you are experiencing, the good and bad. And it is also the place, where you take your rightful self-aware position in co-creating this reality with the underlying bandwidth that makes up all possible experiences.
How do I get to it?
There are many ways to allow you to get to the root of your operating system, that which determines how you operate, everything you know about everything you are aware of. Over the years humanity has collected an array of tools. E.g. yoga is a collection of tools that allow your body to be still (through asanas, the physical exercises), your emotions to be still (through pranayama, breathing exercises), and your mind to be still (through meditation, focus on one object, a specific focal point like a mantra, or even nothingness). In Western Magic, or other Shamanic traditions, aspects of the different bodies are externalized, e.g. through visualization of demons or projection through animals.
Which is the right tool?
That is for you to determine. You do it through your religion - that activity that makes you feel re-connected (from Latin re-ligare, as in ligament) after realizing “I”, and that gives meaning to you through your interpretation and assessment of your experience in this material world. Religion is a personal responsibility. No priest, no shaman, no guru, no teacher can create it for you. They can all serve as guideposts, but beware of allowing them to point you in any direction but the one that starts with owning full responsibility for “I”.
Where to start?
Start with owning “I”. And start with deciding that “I” is supposed to have a great experience on this planet. Ask yourself in any moment that does not feel like it: “Who is “I” right now?” You will find that most “negative” experiences result from attaching aspects of one of your three bodies to something outside of you. You are physically, emotionally or mentally “addicted”. Something outside of you is creating an experience for you. Own your center. That which animates all others. Live, play with your interfaces, but BE in your center – whatever gets you there.
To thy Self be True…
In a comment on a recent blog I wrote for Applied Esoterix about the challenge of letting people know who you are without resolving to platitudes and job titles, the recent drive toward turning your Self into a brand was pointed out as a dangerous reduction of our selves: “Reducing the complex, often contradictory and typically diverse nature of ‘who we are’ to a logo, a tag line, a sound bite or a twitter message is virtually impossible.” [thank you dangerousideas!]
Fine point. No brand could ever capture your Self, only a persona, a limited aspect of your Self. For it to be representative of your Self, that persona has to be infused with your essence, your values, but it is important to remember that it is not your Self.
Brand YOU
In many ways I welcome the Brand YOU movement. For years, I have helped artists, musicians, coaches, and other individuals create brands for themselves. It is always a somewhat amusing (for me) and usually challenging (for them) process to get people to understand the difference between brand and Self. It comes out clearly when you are developing, e.g. a website. On the one hand, the act of surfing the web is a very personal and intimate one (one person, one screen), and it is important to infuse your virtual representation with as much of your Self and essence as possible. On the other hand, I keep reminding people I work with that this is not about them having to put themselves out there. It’s an avatar, a virtual persona, a mask, a representative of yourself. Not your Self.
Corporate Personhood
In many ways I like this new development as I think it is part of the move from institutionalization to collaboration as pointed out by thinkers like Clay Shirky. We have created corporations and have given them the status of personhood – a somewhat scary notion as most behave like psychopaths with no regard to others, single-minded focus on generating only monetary profit, and several characteristics that indeed do not make them particularly good citizens. But that is another story… (check out The Corporation if you want to know more)
The point here being that if we give corporate entities protection through personhood, it seems fair to give individual persons protection through incorporation. This does not just apply to limited liability, but goes beyond that toward recognition as fully functioning and trading entities (different from the capitalized version of your name on your licenses that serves as your registration of your alien vessel in foreign waters – yet another story).
Person – Persona?
Person, as a good reminder, etymologically rooted comes from “mask”. It’s a mask you wear. Let’s look at the definition of persona:
- pl., -nas, or -nae (-nē). A voice or character representing the speaker in a literary work.
- personae The characters in a dramatic or literary work.
- pl., personas. The role that one assumes or displays in public or society; one’s public image or personality, as distinguished from the inner self.
“All the world’s a stage, and we are merely actors,” dramatis personae of history. Especially the third definition is the key to our dilemma here. Persona is what you put out into the world, it is not you, your inner world.
Persona and Neurosis
The thing is, you have many personas: Who you are with your parents, your lover, your kids, your friends, your boss, a police officer who stops you for speeding, etc., each time you use a (maybe only slightly) different persona. You utilize different strategies based on your early imprints and conditioning, and based on what you have learned over the years to be successful in each scenario.
This is good and healthy. If you were always the same persona, you would lose out on the subtle dynamics created when you interact with others. What becomes problematic is when you start attaching to your personas. When you begin to identify yourself with a particular persona so deeply, that – at least for the moment – your self and other personas become inaccessible.
Attempting to keep in check these multiple personas becomes a juggling game. One of the key causes of modern day neurosis lies in attempting to keep multiple personas in congruence without a pervasive sense of Self. In extreme cases, it can even lead to multiple personality disorder… What is missing if that happens? A strong sense of Self serving as the glue or underlying web of connectivity.
The Whole Self – YOU is a Collective
Your self is an array of multiple dynamics. It’s a collective, not just of personas, but also archetypes. Throughout many traditions the self is represented as a circle:
If you think about your personas, they are your interfaces to the external world. If you begin to identify with them instead of yourself, you ultimately end up gangrene and cut off from that, which in truth is the totality of you.
Many voices
When you think about how you experience reality, there are a variety of voices in your head (however that manifests for you). Some are the voices of our parents or teachers from early childhood, sometimes the voices of our lovers or friends appear to help us make decisions, and then there are other voices that whisper encouragement or devastating thoughts into our awareness. It’s a bit like the gods appearing anytime the hero needs to make a decision in historical references like the Iliad (if you want to go deep on voices in your head, I recommend Julian Jaynes “Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”).
Archetypes – Your Guides to the Unconscious
Jung initially created the notion of archetype to describe transpersonal characters sometimes occurring in dreams, shared not just by a variety of his patients, but even across cultural contexts. In a way, I like to think of archetype as a personality schemata, a high-level template for a persona if you will.
Carolyn Myss introduced me to a very practical application of archetypes when I studied with her several years ago. She wrote about this in her book “Sacred Contracts” (I am quoting liberally, for her specific theory, please check out her work). Here, she suggests, that each of us have a collection of twelve archetypes that serve as our guides and connectors to our subconscious. Four of these we have in common, eight of these are part of our particular makeup.
Victim/Child/Saboteur/Prostitute
According to Myss, the four archetypes and their respective voices we each hear at times are the victim, the child, the saboteur and the prostitute. Each of them sound negative, but remember they are your guides to your subconscious. We create situations in life that allow us to grow. When we encounter them (and they indeed might not be pleasant), we are invited to evolve by heeding the voices of our guides, and taking action to shift back to our Self:
- Victim – “Why me?”, “They did this to me!”, “Poor, poor, pitiful me” - These are some of the thought patterns associated with the victim. We all know what it feels like to feel like a victim. Truth is, none of us is ever a victim. Events occur. Excrement happens. How we interpret the situation determines as to whether we feel like a victim or not (even Jesus on the cross did not consider himself a victim, but instead said “forgive them cause they don’t know what they do” – not much of a victim there…). When the victim voice chimes into our consciousness, it’s an invitation to ask yourself “How can I take care of myself in this moment?”, “How can I reframe the situation to feel like I have actions available to me?”
- Child - “I don’t know how this works”, “I am helpless”, “I am overwhelmed” - As the child you become small and everything else becomes big, you don’t know and everyone else seems to know, you are out of control in a confusing world. When this archetype pipes up, make sure to be kind to yourself. It’s okay that you don’t know. Nobody does, remember? Turn it around and ask yourself “How can I make this situation fun?” – a good thing about children is their attention span is not very long and easily consumed by new and shiny things.
- Saboteur - “You think you can do this?”, “Remember how you screwed up last time?”, “What makes you so special?” - The saboteur reminds us of our shortcomings, our failures, our weaknesses. Every time he sneers, you are invited to step back, take a moment, and remind yourself of what you have learned from the past failure and how this relates to your situation at hand. Every failure is an opportunity for quantum growth.
- Prostitute - “It’s not that bad”, “I know what I have here, I don’t know what’s out there”, “At least you know this” - This archetype is the reason people stay in crappy jobs or abusive relationships. It’s the voice that reminds you of uncertainty, and it challenges you to find comfort in uncertainty. Yes, knowing what you have is great, but if you really want to grow, you have to be willing to give up who you are for who you could become – which might feel like a little death… but then, some little deaths are quite pleasant
Your Personal Archteypes
In addition to the four described above, Myss suggests that each of us have eight additional personal archetypes. Examples of those are artist, guide, healer, magician, hero, helper, etc. (Myss has a long list in Sacred Contracts). You can find yours by thinking about the characters in movies or books that you relate to. Or historic figures. What are some of the patterns that connect them? Which aspects resonate with you?
Living dynamically from the center
Your personas connect you to the outside world. For them to be truly representative of your Self, they have to be infused with its essence. You have to remember who you are. If you do, then you can easily find the appropriate strategies to connect to the world outside of you in a way that serves you – through your physical encounters and personas you engage then, or virtually through the brands you create to represent you (and ideally go to work for you nearly like clones you send off to the factory). When you find yourself getting sucked into your brand or worse, having reduced who you think you are to a slogan or behavior pattern, time to step back, and evaluate how this particular strategy is serving you.
Your archetypes are your inner voices that guide you to areas of your unconscious where you might have open wounds, trigger points, or learning lessons. When they pipe up, you know you need to pay attention and ensure that you are keeping your center. From here, you can now ask yourself what dynamic this voice is serving in this moment. What beliefs or truths do you hold that are being enforced by this voice? Who would you be if you had solved this already?
You are many People
Around ninety percent of the DNA in our bodies is not ours. It’s the DNA of bacteria, fungi, and things I am sometimes not sure I want to know about. Your consciousness is not much different. There is more than one entity running the show. We collate them into an experience of self, but ultimately, it takes a village to make you happen, inside and out. The key to having a coherent and forwarding experience here is to get to know your team. Don’t try and make them all one. They tend to resent that (just like you want to maintain your individuality and not become part of the masses). They are here to help you. As you learn to embrace your personas, use them effectively to maneuver the outside world, you will find that being yourself with different strategies is way more rewarding than constantly trying to adjust your personas to the demands of other people and letting them tell you who you are.
Similarly, as you make your archetypes your friends (e.g. by conversing with them in your head, or using automatic writing), they now will help you identify opportunities for clearing out patterns you hold in your unconscious that are not serving you.
Observe You
Ultimately, the one thing you know is real for certain, is your experience right here right now. If you are shifting toward observing what is occurring around you, and inside of you, shift to Observer mode, you have a pretty good way of finding your Self. Most of the other dynamics tend to be attached to personas or archetypes. The one thing that is for sure your Self, your tastebud on the tongue of universe, is the point of perception, the one that is reading this right now. Be that as often as possible.
The Metaphorical Mind
“Every child is born an artist, the problem is to remain one once they grow up.” – Pablo Picasso
One of my favorite art stories as a child came from a documentary about Picasso. It was showing his progression in understanding and communicating his reality. The documentary started with a water color he had made of a bullfight as a sixteen year old. It was beautiful and attempted to depict the bull, the audience, the vibrant colors with as much realism as possible.
The documentary went on to show his progression as a painter and artist using his depiction of bulls as a baseline. The bull went on to become reduced bit by bit as Picasso was learning to communicate the essence. Slowly it turned into the line drawing of a bull that Picasso is so famous for today.
The very last item shown in this exploration was a piece he had made out of a bicycle handle and a bicycle seat. He had arranged them in a way that they looked like a bull’s head. And even though I knew I was looking at bicycle parts, I saw a bull looking at me from the wall…
This was my first direct experience of what I have come to call the Metaphorical Mind.
The metaphorical mind is that of artists, poets, inventors and engineers. It is a mind that can see something for what it isn’t with as much ease as seeing it for what it is we commonly agree on.
A bicycle saddle or a bulls head. A handle and horns…
What something is
We tend to get stuck in determining what something “is”. But what “is” something? What “is” “it” to “you”?
Your reality is created by distinctions. Patterns you have signifiers for. Signifiers being signs which convey meaning to you. The more signs you have, the more distinctions you can create in your experience, and the more complex it will become. Benjamin Lee Whorf created the concept of linguistic relativity to account for this phenomenon. He is usually cited when people bring up that Eskimos have many words for snow, as for them subtle distinctions about the snow (its ice level, depth, crust, etc.) are crucial to survival.
Similarly, your vocabulary has developed to ensure your survival. You learned to call for your parents, direct people around your physical experience from hunger to full diapers, and later learned more subtle distinctions that allow you to manipulate and function in reality.
Schema, Schema on the Wall
Distinctions are grouped into schemata. Schemata are higher order concepts. E.g. Lemons, Oranges and Mandarins are all part of the schema “citrus fruit.”
Now that you have the schema “citrus fruit,” I can tell you about Grapefruits, which you might have never encountered before. All I need to say is that it is a citrus fruit, and you will know various properties and I can now compare and contrast it to other citrus fruit you know. E.g. I can say it’s usually bigger than an orange, pink in color, a bit more bitter, etc.
Schema are higher-level principles. We can build schemata infinitely until we end up with meaningless oneness. So obviously, it is a tool to be wielded wisely. The key being that it allows for us to abstract something from what it is, and by abstracting it into a higher level order find parallels that might be surprising, amusing (there is a great theory about humor as a benign violation but that’s a whole different story), or sometimes simply beautiful.
Living with a metaphorical mind
Living with a metaphorical mind allows for a different experience of reality. A poet friend of mine once wrote about LA that it is “a great place for paranoids, because nothing is what it seems like and the earth could open up and swallow you at any point.” I think it is a great place for enlightenment for the same reason. Realizing that nothing is what it is allows you to create your own meaning, your own symbolic reality. This is where you begin to live a magickal life of correspondences. Having a metaphorical mind that can jump in experiencing things, not just for what they are, but what they can be, provides you with:
- A richer experience of reality
- The ability to be playful in your experience of reality
- The ability to relate to others more easily
- The ability to see the bigger picture
A richer experience of reality
On a most basic level, it’s fun to create stories. Children love it (some of my last posts where about beginner’s mind and the wisdom of children). We like to make up things. Depending on our early conditioning, we will later in life adopt either the controlling parent stance that this is non-sense and a waste of time, or – as Picasso mentioned – we remain artists, having an ever new experience of this reality, learning new distinctions, delving into an ever new sense of wonder.
And be playful…
Living in a wonder world opens you up to the idea that you might be able to create aspects of your reality. I am not necessarily talking about “The Secret” here. Not the naive magical thinking of a child… and exactly that – with a dose of realism. There are probability patterns to contend with and as much as I wish somebody would knock on my door and tell me that there is world peace now because I sat on my couch and wished for it, I doubt it will go quite that way… But, imagining a world in peace might allow me to see new opportunities to apply my knowledge, skills and abilities toward that. If I only see the world for what it “is”… why would I want to get up and participate in anything? Being able to see the world for what it could be, drawing widely from all the metaphors available, might open up new realistic possibilities.
Empathy
Being versed in switching viewpoints, in drawing parallels to archetypal patterns, in seeing schemata, also allows for a deeper sense of empathy. Once you grok cubism, how can you ever assume that there is only one way of looking at the world. And if I can leave my default perspective, I might as well try on other people’s point of view and see what the world might look like from their perspective. Nothing connects people like being able to empathize with each other. We are growing up as a human species where for the first time we are beginning to have global awareness of each other. For this not to end in tragedy, we will require a lot of empathy.
The bigger picture
As we begin to have more distinctions, see more patterns and create ever higher level of schemata, it is impossible, not to see the big picture. While the big picture might be warped due to some primary assumptions that might be off (e.g. if I accept the idea that oil is required for human survival, the “big picture” would entice me to build a highly controlled society with a small oligarchic elite), it will still encompass a global understanding. With the technologies available to us today, we cannot help but to. Within this new experience, having a metaphorical mind will allow us to integrate schemata while being confronted with ever more complex distinctions. It is not easy running a city and having a political mind (from Greek polis = city). We are now being asked to step up to run a planet and having a terrestrial citizen mind. It will be easy to see differences between each other, but even more important to see the parallels. For that, a metaphorical mind will be extremely helpful.
It’s not just for artists anymore
The metaphorical mind is something each one of us has access to. We use it daily and have used it as a child to begin to make meaning of this world. Each of us can access it, and we have no excuse not to exercise this circuit. Especially in a world of crisis it is crucial for each of us to begin to see the world for what it could be. To do so for the world is a tall order. To even do that for your own life is not an easy task. But it’s like a muscle. You can exercise it. Think of all the uses for a brick. Write them down. See? Easy… Start small…
Now that’s a fact!
The facts of life are everywhere surrounding us, immersing us in ever new media streams. Radio and TV are already becoming the slow media, even blogs are making way to a bombardment of 140 character factoids wrapped in status updates and riddled with abbreviations and code. If we are not consciously managing our media diet, we can easily get swallowed up in a never-ending barrage of expert opinions, evidence, “truths” created by this or that individual with the apparent proper credentials or endorsements.
But what is a fact?
The Latin root of fact is facere, which simply means doing. A fact is an event that has occurred, the deed has been done. Interestingly, the original use of the word was primarily concerned with “evil” deeds – deeds that require punishment…
The dictionary of current use defines fact as:
- Something known to exist or to have happened
- Something known to be true
Now… there are some curious issues with either definition…
Who knows what really happened?
Experiments have indicated again and again that human memory appears more fallible than reliable. Multiple observers of the same event will have sometimes drastically different accounts of it, and it has further been shown that those accounts change over time and depending on situational context. So then whose imagination can you trust? Really.
But the event occurred… there is a “Truth”, right? Something that can be proven… Maybe… The core issue here is a materialistic assumption about an objective material universe that exists independent of the observer. That this does not seem to be the case is something that quantum physicists have postulated repeatedly over the course of the last century (does a falling tree in the forest make a sound if nobody listens?). Some even went so far as to suggest that we might be able to affect past events…
One of the oddest studies in that regard that I have come across was an experiment where a random number generator produced strings of ones and zeroes which were carefully sealed in envelopes without anybody observing them. Then, several weeks later, supposed psychics were asked to focus on creating either more ones or more zeroes in the outputs before the envelopes were opened. The curious thing was that they were indeed able to influence the outcomes with statistical significance.
So who can actually without a doubt prove that something did indeed occur?
This question – among other things – gave rise to the theory of Phenomenology in psychology. One of its main tenets being that therapy is a partnership aimed to create better functioning and experience within a social context rather than a doctor (the one who has the facts) and patient (who apparently has the “wrong” facts) relationship in which the patient has to be cured of errant beliefs.
But what about the “Truth”?
“Believe those seeking truth; doubt those who find it.” - Andre Gide
We want to know. We need some level of stability for our experience, crave safety on a fundamental level (after basic physical needs, the need for safety ranks next in Maslow’s pyramid of needs). And we want to know the “Truth”.
So you want to know the “Truth”? You can’t handle the truth!
Just kidding
True and False
True and false are primary tools of logic. Logic is a coherent closed and abstract system. Within logic, statements can be evaluated as true, false, currently or ultimately indeterminable. Logic is not reality. In reality, there is no “Truth” – especially not one with a capital T. From a logical perspective most claims of “Truth” are nonsense as they fall into the ultimately indeterminablecategory. As such “God is love” is equally non-sensical as “God loves pepperoni pizza.”
Science, properly conducted, is a process of evaluating probabilities. The scientific method knows no “Truth” – only it’s aberrant cousin materialism who sometimes cloaks itself in science’ name. Apparently something even prominent scientists and thinkers fall prey to at times when they drink enough of their own kool-aid.
Philosophy also knows no “Truth”, only interesting problems – at the very latest, the early sophists figured that one out – which is probably why their reputation was destroyed by those who peddled “Truth” at the time, and why their wisdom inspired name has since become synonymous with opportunism.
Any belief system that claims “Truth” – whether materialistic or spiritualistic – sooner or later will require you to suspend your disbelief. At some point you will be required to accept some basic axiom on which the entire tower of theory and lore is built.
How to live without “Truth”
We do need some stable sense of self and reality in order to function. Each of us holds our own truths. Our values and beliefs make up that which we hold dear, in addition to a collection of probabilities and abstraction systems like logic or mathematics, which together allow us to function in this reality as individuals and in the collective.
Humans need “certainty ” to function. We cannot question everything all the time. If we did… well, you imagine it
And it’s great. If I had to e.g. revisit gravity every day, I might find myself a bit challenged. It’s a well functioning hypothesis, a good stable platform to work with.
What I do practice is to leave a circuit open in case there is an invitation to revise my understanding of reality. Rely on what I know to be “true”, but be open in case there is new information that might affect its probabilities. Things do change. Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur - times are changing and so are we. And, on top of that, I do not simply accept change, but demand it, challenge myself to transform by engaging with change consciously and creatively.
The idea of growth
The idea of continuous growth has been applied to human systems, and mostly to externals such as wealth and what is commonly referred to as progress.
Growing up as a child I was still reeling in the echoes of the constant progress (and infinite consumption) ideology that had been installed in my parents and the whole post WW2 generation. While ideas of sustainability and the need for holistic closed circuit resource loops have replaced my notions of economic progress, and while I carefully embrace the progress of technology, I primarily hold on to growth as it relates to human evolution (especially as I believe it is crucial if we wish to not find our own demise in uncontrolled technical evolution).
While I find solace and stability in what I do know so far, I have fun challenging myself to ever new visions of self: who I know – and sometimes don’t know – I can become. Within that, I take great care to balance love of, forgiveness for and trust in who I have already become.
Who you can be tomorrow
Yoga can be seen as a tool set and a collection of means to allow you to do something tomorrow that you are not able to do today – whether this relates to your physical, emotional or mental experience of self. One of the wonderful stories my yoga teacher shared with me at some point was the idea of yoga as a bird:
- The head faces forward and looks at ever new expanding horizons coming into view.
- The wings represent your ability to adopt new helpful habits (including habits of emotion or thought) and your ability to let go of that which no longer serves you. In their interplay, they allow for continuous course correction.
- The tail stands for our human tendency to form habits in the first place – it is what provides us with stability.
I have always enjoyed this story of the bird. I treat “facts” that way. I can see what I can see now, but I know I am in flight and new ideas, new notions will soon show themselves in the distance. While I base myself on things I know to be “true”, I also constantly adopt and let go to reach that which I am setting out to attain.
So…here is an invitation: as you go through your days, ask yourself, what is fact to you? How attached are you to ideas or concepts that others might find ludicrous and vice versa? What new things have you learned lately? How have you shifted your perception of reality?
Staying open
`Who are YOU?’ said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I–I hardly know, sir, just at present– at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”
Now that’s a fact!
