“A New Theory of Intelligence”

Never knowing what will show up in my morning email, this was one of those surprising, “That’s right,…I DID sign up for these,” notices that I found.

Months ago, after seeing a Netflix documentary on the latest-and-greatest humanitarian-related concepts that Bill Gates was now into [He’s constantly reading the newest theories on basically everything eco-scientists/medical-specialists are attempting, to decide where best to plug in his philanthropic money], I thought I’d like to know more about what he reads because some of the same documentary-mentioned subject matter that he had read also interested me, meaning I wanted to hear more of what he thought might be worth future reading, and I signed up for his newsletter describing those same topics.

“Of all the subjects I’ve been learning about lately, one stands out for its mind-boggling complexity: understanding how the cells and connections in our brains give rise to consciousness and our ability to learn….” Bill Gates from his blog “GatesNotes” https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/A-Thousand-Brains

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Okay, now that subject definitely peaks my interest: defining consciousness and hearing about ‘a new theory of intelligence’. The problem being that I am writing about this NOT from having read this book, but only having done background research on Hawkins’ book mentioned, and on his previous one that many reviewers were more enthralled with, called ON INTELLIGENCE:

“Hawkins develops a powerful theory of how the human brain works, explaining why computers are not intelligent and how, based on this new theory, we can finally build intelligent machines.

The brain is not a computer, but a memory system that stores experiences in a way that reflects the true structure of the world, remembering sequences of events and their nested relationships and making predictions based on those memories. It is this memory-prediction system that forms the basis of intelligence, perception, creativity, and even consciousness.”

***

Now to me—THAT would be interesting to read. I’m not sure that I agree with all said by the reviewer, because I think “consciousness” is the ‘ocean in which we swim,’ and we are only “receivers/imbibers” of it to the degree that we open ourselves to it; but I can agree that “intelligence” per se is the ‘building of that reception’ or by birth the ‘natural receptivity’ to larger amounts of that vast ‘ocean of consciousness’ available to us.

However beyond all my personal opinions expressed here, I just wanted to generally mention that those two Hawkins’ books are available to peruse as possibly helping us better understand how the mind functions and how we interpret our world, our relationships/interactions, and our surrounding environments.

Too bad my library doesn’t yet have them. (Sigh.)

Becoming a Spiritual Warrior

I really didn’t want to blatantly rip off Alberto Villoldo’s latest newsletter, but what he mentions here is worth sharing in its entirety with others who might have some interest in the subject matter discussed.

In some ways this does remind me of Buddhism’s “Eight-fold Path”—or “The Way to Enlightenment,” complete with the “Four Noble Truths,” and the “Precepts,” etc.; but each culture has a particular way of outlining wisdom/enlightenment concepts—or defining the path to enlightenment per se, and this is Villoldo’s interpretation of the Peruvian/Andes shaman’s (the Laika or Earthkeepers) version. I’ll keep my comments to a minimum until the end as he’s very thorough in his assessment.

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Nov. 15, 2021 Newsletter from The Four Winds (Alberto Villoldo’s organization):

“November is a great month to be a spiritual warrior and look inward toward the self and personal development. Meditating on the sixteen practices that are part of the Four Insights is the theme this month.

The Four Insights are wisdom teachings that have been protected by secret societies of Earthkeepers, the medicine men and women of the Americas. The Insights state that all creation — humans, whales, and even stars — are made from light manifest through the power of intention. The Four Insights reveal ancient technologies to become beings of light with the ability to perceive the energy and vibration that make up the physical universe at a much higher level. The ancients used their mastery of the insights to heal disease, eliminate emotional suffering, and grow new bodies that age and die differently.

The First Insight, The Way of the Hero, is associated with the physical body, the material world, and sensory perception. As you master it, you’ll start to see beyond the most simplistic, literal level of reality. You’ll begin to recognize the events from your early life that shaped and molded you, as well as how your parents and culture affected who you’ve become. And then, when you outlive that story, you can craft a new one that’s better suited to a hero’s journey. You can let go of the tedious tale of a middle-aged man reliving his adolescence, or a woman in her 40s trying to look and act as if she were in her 20s, and write a far more original story for yourself. You will recognize the divine choreography of events in your past that have propelled you on your journey of healing, learning, and discovery.

By meditating on the four practices associated with the way of the hero you can create new and better stories. Those practices are: Non-judgment, Non-suffering, Non-Attachment, and Practice of Beauty. You can find more in the first November blog.

The Second Insight, The Way of the Luminous Warrior, is associated with fearlessness. When we become luminous warriors, we recognize that our job is to use love to vanquish its opposite – and its opposite is not hate, but fear. Fear is the absence of love in the way that darkness is the absence of light. Fear disconnects us from Spirit, from nature, and from our own inner selves. Our challenge is to exorcise fear and its darkness within by embracing love and its light. The second insight teaches us to wield a sword of light and dispel fear forever.

By meditating on the four practices associated with the way of the luminous warrior, you can dispel fear. The four practices are: Fearlessness, Non-Doing, Certainty, and Non-Engagement. You can find out more in the second November blog.

The Third Insight, The Way of the Seer, is to walk softly on the earth and dream.

In this modern world, dreamtime has been consigned to the domain of sleep. To experience it, you have to lie down, close your eyes, and enter that deep reverie where images appear to you. Yet for an Earthkeeper, there’s little difference between the sleeping and the waking dreams of everyday life. Earthkeepers try to be fully awake even while asleep, and, when awake, they are able to dream a world of grace and beauty into being.

By meditating on the four practices of The Way of the Seer, you will learn how to create with your eyes wide open. Those practices are: Beginner’s Mind, Transparency, Integrity, and Living Consequently. You can find more in the third November blog.

The Fourth Insight, the Way of the sage, means you look around and see only beauty. The sage understands that everything they experience is a projection of their inner landscape, or dream. This means that because we are the creators of each event and incident in our life, nothing ever happens to us. We never need to fix anything in the outer world—if we want to transform some circumstance that appears to be outside of ourselves, we need only to own it and change it within.

The world is a screen that we project our movie onto. This doesn’t mean that the world isn’t real . . . the world is very real. We simply confuse the image we project with reality, trying to change the action on the screen when what we really need to do is edit the movie or change the script. Once you understand that you can do this whenever you want, you’ll forever cease to be a helpless victim or an innocent bystander.

By meditating on the four practices of the Ways of the Sage, you learn how to forever cease to be a helpless victim or an innocent bystander. Those practices are: No Mind, No Time, Owning Your Own Projections, and Indigenous Alchemy. You can find out more in the fourth November blog. …”

***

Again, not much I can say here other than originally Alberto trained as a psychologist/anthropologist, and then he like many of us at the time, became enthralled by anthropologist Carlos Castaneda’s recently published, multi-part saga of The Teachings of Don Juan, the Yaqui native sorcerer—or the northern Mexico “Man of Knowledge,” as Castaneda often referred to him.

Thus anthropologically inspired, Villoldo then went in search of his own native-shaman mentors still occupying the Amazon and the Andes, and likely got more than he had bargained for; but he hung in there to glean all he could from the quickly-dying keepers of this ancient knowledge, and in doing so, inspired eager northerners to flock far southward in search of their own spiritual awakenings.

In truth he’s been at this personal exploration and native-shaman education for many decades, and has written numerous books on it—of which I likely have most of them as he’s a good writer and easy to read.

While Carlos Castaneda was later proven to be a questionable reference to actual Yaqui sorcery/shamanism, Villoldo always stayed true to his source material and to his native mentors.

If you are interested, the BLOG itself is on The Four Winds main page.

*Alberto Villoldo’s BLOG page on The Four Winds website. https://thefourwinds.com/blog/

Sudoku Revelation

I was journaling a few days ago and mentioned that I’d just had a minor revelation while working a more challenging Sudoku puzzle, which was to “Keep working it,” until the correct number for that square became obvious (‘can be this number, but can’t be that one’, etc.).

That one breakthrough puzzle piece then became the tipping domino that triggered the remainder of blank number slots to fall into place; to which I then thought likewise that ‘if you can just find that first answer to your life questions, then all the other answers will fall into place.’

Then I asked myself ‘But what is the QUESTION to which the first answer is so influential?’

Now to me the first question would be, “What is the meaning or purpose of LIFE?” Or more personally, “What is the meaning and purpose of MY life?”

In my opinion, the first answer to that general question would be, “LIFE is a training ground.” And then the answer to the more personal question would be, “The meaning and purpose of my LIFE is to engage with and learn from my surroundings, because it is ‘training me’ in some way—FOR WHAT I have no idea.”

So to follow through with that somewhat revelatory logic above, whenever I hit a snag in my life path or encounter a difficult patch of road that I’m currently traveling, the best strategy would be to simply “Keep working it,” until a solution to the problem is revealed, because if you work it long enough, the multitude of options fall away until you only have one or two choices available.

And a binary choice is simpler than multiple choices, even if it’s a hard one to make, like whether you “Stay or Go?”

Healing Our Collective Trauma

Because I’ve signed up for other FREE online psychology/spirituality conferences, I now receive numerous offers for additional conferences; and this is one I will definitely be registering for as I recognize a few speakers from other summits, etc.

I’ll admit that I am one of the most ‘dangerous of beasts’: an armchair psychologist with no certifications in the field whatsoever—just an intense interest in many of the subjects discussed as it all deals with consciousness in general and how we interpret that individually and collectively.

So if anyone is interested in these subjects, I suggest that you at least go to the registration page shown below and check out the speakers and the subject matter, because there are 70 scheduled speakers and I found numerous subjects of interest to me, particularly the “Healing Our Collective Trauma” session which first caught my eye in the original notice. Here are a few details if you might be interested in this:

“Trauma Super Conference: December 3^rd -9^th (online FREE if you register for it)

“Have you experienced trauma?
Do you have chronic stress or anxiety and don’t know why?
Exposure to trauma, can have long-term effects on your health and wellbeing.

Join the Trauma Super Conference where we’ll explore the impacts of trauma, share tools and strategies to help support healing, and much more!…”

“What makes this a Super conference?

We are not only bringing together in-depth interviews with 70+ of the world’s top experts in trauma, but we are also offering extra resources, including tools, techniques and practices you can start to help you become aware of your own trauma, understand the impact it has on your daily life, and begin to start the healing process….

Healing our collective trauma
Understanding and healing relational trauma
The relationship between trauma, substance use, and addiction
Recovering from narcissistic abuse
Stress and burnout as a symptom of trauma
The future of psychedelics for healing trauma
Hip hop as a form of therapy
Navigating the journey of grief
The power of functional medicine for healing
Trauma as a lens to understand cultural mistrust
And much more…”

Sign up at: https://traumasuperconference.com/?fid=fb&fbclid=IwAR1HFzPizieGKvSQptdmsvn5aOztJ0C3qB1OZCsM81KuXjk3y_RYtJCHlDU

Hold A Hand

The Universal Creative Force

(Sometimes a post is so spot-on appropriate, I only have to share it so that others can also absorb the higher energy from it.)

Tao & Zen

“There is a Universal Creative Force connecting all beings and things, a source of love and wisdom that can be drawn from (and revealed through the creation of works of art).

[Indigenous cultures teach that] ‘spiritual healing’ begins with respect for the Great Spirit—the life and love that can be found in all of nature’s creations. Each element of creation has its own will, its own way, and its own purpose. These ways need to be respected, not exploited, by human beings.

I have learned that all knowledge is available to us. We don’t have to create it; we have only to access it. Simply ask in the right way—not with pride in your accomplishment, but with an open heart. Don’t think about yourself at all, nor about your ability or lack of it. Concentrate, rather, on attuning yourself to Infinite Consciousness and ask for guidance in what you want to do.

We are all surrounded by an ocean of abundance: knowledge, wisdom, ability, opportunities, material plenty. What a pity it is that people close themselves off from that spiritual environment. Keeping their gaze fixed on the ground, they trudge through a life burdened with worries, fears, and self-doubts.

To effect large-scale changes in our lives and in the world, we need to hold large-scale visions in our minds and consciously pour our energy into them.

As the Hindu sages who fashioned the Akashic concept realized, there are aspects of the human mind that are unlimited in space, therefore omnipresent, and that are also boundless in time, therefore eternal and immortal. Omnipresence and eternality are qualities that have always been attributed to the Divine—thus the Hindu aphorism ‘Thou art that,’ which affirms that we share qualities with the Absolute, however named.”

~Ervin Laszlo

“Cosmos -Return to Oneness-” – Ervin Laszlo

Shvetashvatara Upanishad – Advaita Vedānta https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1xw8LxopiM

Reset

Tao & Zen

“To the Taoist mentality, the aimless, empty life does not suggest anything depressing. On the contrary, it suggests the freedom of clouds and mountain streams, wandering nowhere, of flowers in impenetrable canyons, beautiful for no one to see, and of the ocean surf forever washing the sand, no end.” ~Alan Watts
— Photo by Mohamed Nohassi

Perhaps I’ve mentioned before that Alan Watts helped to westernize Eastern philosophies in the 1960’s and 70’s. Never dull and often controversial, he became a clarion voice for spiritual awakening among eager young-adult seekers.

He’s always worth a listen on YouTube as his post-hummus fan base seems to grow larger by the day which amazes me in one sense. But in another, people now seem more needy of his jocular, tell-it-straight version of how to find yourself and your purpose in life, which for him to sum it up in minimal words would have been: “Shut up. Open your eyes and your mind, and just breathe into life.”

I like his quote above because it soothes my inner restlessness when I feel like I’m not ‘doing enough’ or ‘making a difference for others,’ or whenever I just plain feel purposeless at the moment.

An “…aimless, empty life does not suggest anything depressing. On the contrary, it suggests the freedom of clouds and mountain streams, wandering nowhere, of flowers in impenetrable canyons, beautiful for no one to see, and of the ocean surf forever washing the sand, no end.”

When you take the ‘ego’ out of this world—the narcissistic ‘ME-ness’ out of life’s equation, you realize that the tree does fall in the forest whether anyone hears it or not, but it matters only to egoic us that we DO hear it.

In truth the clouds and mountain streams still meander wherever they wish, whether we are there or not to witness it; and wildflowers still bloom in places we may never see, while the rolling surf endlessly slips in and out of the shoreline oblivious to human observation. They have as much ‘purpose’ in the overall life process as we will ever have, but they don’t question why they are doing what they are—they just do it.

So as Watts might advise: Just BE. Just breathe. Just appreciate the moment. You are here.

Isn’t that enough?

Telling Our Stories

I’m using myself as example here, but maybe you also have noticed this: Sometimes at night when trying to shut off my mind, it’s hard to know where one intruding thought ends and another begins. I mean they just seem to explode tangentially in first one direction and then another.

So as I’m lying there trying to relax and clear my mind, I start to wonder if any of those distracting, annoying thoughts stand alone as originators of the ‘can’t shut it off’ problem, or are they all connected at a deeper level so that they all just spew out randomly like pressurized waste because my unconscious mind is trying to clear its cache of collected debris?

Wide awake now, the next question I asked myself was WHY am I telling myself these particular things—not just rehashing the day’s interactions, etc., but also creating a running monolog to accompany them—like who did what and how it affected me, and what I did or didn’t do, or WHAT PART I played in those mock daily dramas—such as, what was my ROLE in what happened at the time—was I the victim of another’s ill intentions or was I the aggressor in a testy interaction, or was I the rescuer/hero of the oppressed underdog—meaning the one who stepped into someone else’s conflict to ‘save the day’ for all involved because I couldn’t keep my nose out of it, or was I a total and absolute mute bystander observing all with no sense of concern whatsoever? (I might later wish that I were, but I am NEVER a mute bystander.)

In those ‘tell-myself’ stories, it would seem that each possible self-perceived role is revealing HOW I truly think of myself. As Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda’s epic story series would ask Carlos, “Are you a leaf at the mercy of the wind? Is that how you see yourself? Are you always at the mercy of fate and your surrounding environment? Are you never responsible for your own actions or reactions to whatever presents itself at the moment?”

All good questions. So as my mind tried unsuccessfully again to shut down for the night, I asked myself exactly HOW was I retelling that story of this eventful day of my life? That ‘HOW’ is important here, because I’m actually telling it to myself in this particular way for a deeper reason—there’s a NEED to view myself as whomever I believe myself to be: victim, perpetrator/aggressor, or rescuer/hero.

Now part of this ‘retelling’ problem might be in HOW I viewed the affecting situation as it was actually happening: Was I an active participant in the interaction—a passive one—an unwilling recipient/victim to the actions of others—an instigator myself of conflict that lead to further hostility? If I were being honest here, what part did I really play in that situation, because the world spins on day to day and interactions with others regularly come and go?

And truthfully everybody you meet is in their own version of the world’s events happening to them on whatever level they are engaging with it; meaning that each person has their own ongoing interpretation of what is happening to them at any moment in time with or without others involved.

We all live in our own worlds, safely tucked into our own headspace; and in that headspace we are telling ourselves OUR VERSION of what is or was happening to us: We are telling OUR STORY as we understand it through whatever “perception filters” that we applied at the time.

Some filters may be bright and rosy-pink so our world view is always soft and warm and never threatening. But other ‘perception filters’ may be cloudy or darkened to allow little light to penetrate them, which means that they may obscure the clarity of the view and darken any possible brighter aspects that might have actually occurred.

Another consideration is that in the telling of our now ‘epic life saga’ to ourselves, where does one ‘story version’ end for us and the next one begin, or are they all ‘variations on the same basic theme,’ like: “I’m always the victim here—everybody is against me,” or “I’m always defending myself from everyone else—they won’t leave me be so I’ll give it right back to them,” or “I’m always having to defend those who can’t seem to defend themselves”?

Also keep in mind that reassessing and retelling our personal history is a tough recollection because it’s fraught with such factual subjectivity, lingering emotional residues, and sometimes faltering early memories of what actually occurred. In truth childhood is one of the most influential time periods of our primary psyche development, and one of the least reliable memory storehouses of our early life because we were so limited in overall situational comprehension back then.

For certain I know that my first impressions of life surrounding me as a four or five-year-old compared to my adult interpretations of the same situations and life experiences might be quite different. How could they not be? (That is NOT accounting for barbaric, abusive, life-threatening, childhood living conditions which are hard to forget at any age. But that was not MY personal experience.)

And even as an older child or a teenager comparing to a forty-plus-year-old interpretation of those same life events, they might not match up—meaning someone with some age behind them who has had some experience in how life actually works rather than how ideally it should work, might view a personal life crisis quite differently because even our early pleasure/pain evaluators of a personal experience can evolve as we enter life phases with ripening understandings of ourselves and the world around us.

Pertaining to our personal stories, in one sense you can say that “We tell it like we see it;” but in another sense you can also say that “We tell it like we PERCEIVE it to be,” and that perception may be tainted by our past histories and still festering emotional residues, including previous severe trauma.

Sometimes I think it’s amazing that any of us can perform well at all with everything that we are continually inputting through our multiple senses, instantly evaluating in our minds against known threats, and automatically reacting to in the most self-protecting and self-preserving manner possible.

No wonder we can’t get along as a fully-functioning society with agreed-upon group goals, when we can’t even get our stories straight.

Tilling Her Soul

(When I run across something that really needs to be shared with others, I give it respect and try to provide the viewing opportunity for anyone that the words or the image may touch. So here is the powerful proclamation from Sacred Wild Woman Medicine, with the author listed below. If I knew the image artist, I’d list her.)

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“Sacred Wild Woman Medicine

(Poster based in Canada)

‘~The Soil of Her Soul Has Been Tilled~

She does not need anyone to help her transcend her pain. Her pain is hers to heal. She is the only one who can choose when she is ready to travel deep down inside and harness her medicine.

She doesn’t need anyone to tell her that she needs to release her past.

Her past is hers to own. Her past is a landscape that is only hers. And only she can decide the meaning she gives to all her life’s experiences.

She doesn’t need anyone to transmit wisdom to her. She is her own guru. Her own sage. Her wisdom has been gathered through the ages and her Soul knows what she needs. She has full access to the fountain of Collective Intelligence where she can quench her thirst of knowledge.

She doesn’t need anyone to tell her who she is. She just has to remember. Commune with her ancestors and ask them where she is coming from. Ask her ancestors about the struggles of her great great grandmothers. Thank them for paving the way to have the opportunity to shine her light. She stands on the shoulders of giants and this truth brings her to the values that guide her life.

She doesn’t need anyone to sort her feelings. She is not mentally ill. She is not a statistic that needs to be labeled and medicated. Instead, she tells the world that she owns her feelings and emotions. They are not to be discarded and rejected. Her feelings are guiding posts that lead her to her truth. To what needs her attention.

She doesn’t need anyone to tell her that her unhappiness and sadness can be fixed with a pill. She rejects the status quo. The mainstream understanding of what it means to be human. A feeling human. Instead, she follows the threads of her story and goes to the source of unease in her life.

She doesn’t allow herself to be defined by what they call ‘anxiety’. She knows that the main source of her feeling restless is perhaps because she allowed life to take her away from living her truth and being true to her values.

She doesn’t need to follow anyone’s vision. She has been gifted with the ability to dream. Dream big. Or not dream at all, if she doesn’t want to. When she is ready, the Universe will open the gates of desire to share her vision of the world and her Soul will guide her to her mission.

She doesn’t need anyone to plant the seed of creativity. She is her own teacher that just has to touch the seed that was planted in her at birth. All she has to do is allow it to wake up, to sprout, and to grow. She has within the rain and the sunshine the seeds needs to blossom.

She doesn’t need to pray harder. Meditate more. Speak in tongues. Or deprive herself of nourishment. What she needs is to believe that she is enough. She is worthy. She is ready. She is loved.

She doesn’t need to give her power away anymore. What she needs is to stand in her own truth. Discover her own truth. Dig deep. Ask questions and wait for the answers to come from within.

And as she inquires within, she understands that she lives inside her inner world. Yes, she walks among humankind, but in truth, she lives within the landscape of her own feelings and emotions.

She now knows that there is nothing outside of herself that can add anything to who she is. Who she really is, is already there. Who she is becoming is already there. And she is the only one that has full access to her story, her truth, her values, her mission and vision…

Her Holy Calling is waiting patiently for her to be ready… Ready to step in her own power… ready to reframe her wounds…

Ready to give a new meaning to her story of survival… her story of resilience…

Her story of how adversity forged her… her gifts, her talents, her inner treasures, her medicine she is called to offer the world…

The Soil of Her Soul has been tilled…

She is ready to LIVE HER TRUTH and LIVE IT FULLY…

She is now on a mission to ENNOBLE HUMANITY with all that she is, with her gifts and talents, with her VOICE…

And she is no longer holding back…‘

Words by ‘Archaeology for the Woman’s Soul’ — Corina Luna Dea

Nicole — Sacred Wild Woman Medicine

— Artist~ Unknown”

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Being GRACE

What is GRACE?

We talk about it like we actually know what it is or what it involves, but how do you know GRACE when you see it in the actions of others or hear it from their whispering lips with heads bowed or gazing skyward?

I can make a simple statement aloud, “I live in God’s Grace now and always,” and instantly feel a beautiful wave of higher-frequency energy descend over me like a misty cloud washing me clean from my head down to my toes. It’s a beautiful feeling. Try it for yourself.

Just be at peace, close your eyes and take a few slow, deep breaths, and be sincerely thankful for your presence and consciousness in the here and now.

Then make the statement above with your eyes still closed, and be aware of what your body feels like when you are in that peace-filled state of mind. Do this procedure 3 or 4 times, and see if you can notice how your body feels when you say it.

Actually I thought I would do what I usually do and offer an official definition in quotes here of what GRACE means pertaining to this beautiful feeling, but there really are no adequate definitions out there in the online theological dictionaries that can describe what I feel when GRACE washes over me, so here is MY definition of GRACE:

GRACE isn’t just a particular higher frequency of energy, it is more like an atmosphere of being—a descending cloud of extreme goodness and safeness—a sense of calmness felt at the center of your body that ALL IS WELL and YOU ARE DEEPLY LOVED.

This isn’t something or someone you have to bow to or be shamed into or guilted into obtaining from a God who judges your every thought and behavior on whether they are pure enough for HIM/HER.

GRACE isn’t something that you have to do penance for, or strip yourself bare in front of some higher determiner of your worthiness.

None of us are perfect. None of us are “without sin” to quote any preacher who ever stood before me pretending to know what he/she was speaking of while pounding on the pulpit to keep us awake.

If someone has to make you feel shameful or lesser than your true natural worth, then that person has NO idea what GRACE actually is, and likely never will.

Grace is always there for you—ALL the time. You simply have to realize it and learn to call it to you.

GRACE is true PEACE. GRACE is unquestioned LOVE—free of judgment or conditions.

You already are in GRACE if you can only recognize yourself as such and allow it to flow lovingly over you.

‘Being GRACE’ is a goal—a mind-state—I hope to someday achieve once I learn to get out of my own way.

As can you.

Living with Ambiguity and Uncertainty

This is the last ‘quote-fest’ from James Hollis’s Living an Examined Life—I promise.

I think what I noticed from reading and then scrutinizing quotes from this book, is that it inspired me to do a “What was the meaning of MY LIFE?” recapitulation searching for major themes and significant affecters that helped to make me WHO and WHAT I am at present. (Whoever and whatever that actually is.)

Now this in and of itself means little to anyone but me, and any narration of “my life story” is rife with opinion and subjectivity, especially as a child recalling the most influential affecters of my early life, because how we perceived the world around us as children was raw, had little peripheral context, and involved mainly moments of when we felt loved or threatened.

So just to try and shift my perspective on the entire earliest years of my life, I tried to tell the story NOT from my own viewpoint, but from the people whose lives I most affected by my being suddenly present in their lives; and wow—what a difference that perspective shift made in how I viewed my remembered childhood. In other words, the story wasn’t so much about me, it was more about THEM and how a new baby suddenly shifted their focus and attention.

Retelling my childhood in that manner helped me to see where my most telling ‘issues’ had developed—such as ‘abandonment.’ That title above is a direct quote from Hollis that I’ll show here soon, but for an adopted child “living with ambiguity and uncertainty” was very much a part of my early life.

‘Abandonment’ is often a major affecting theme for adopted children, nothing new there; but all the tentacles branching out from that festering core wound led back to the very sources of my existence and early nurturing.

And THAT assessment from the ‘ME’ who I now am looking back on the most influential sculptors of my fresh, pure, and ready-to-mold psyche, brought a greater understanding to my lesser (but still natural) behaviors. I was sculpted in their own images—created to be who they thought I should be—a masterpiece to display before others with such pride of ownership. (“Go get your violin out now and play for your aunt and uncle.” i.e., meaning the latest captive audience in our livingroom).

I learned a bit more about ‘WHO I AM’ from that recap, than I had previously considered. And with that being said, here’s the rest of Living an Examined Life that I wanted to memorialize here for others:

“…As children we all asked the elemental questions: Who am I, who are you, why are we here, what are we to do, and whither do we go? These questions are most forgotten, pushed into the suburbs of the busy metropolis of modern life. But they rumble on in the unconscious of all of us. We look for them unconsciously in each other, in novels, in television shows, movies, and so on, or we anesthetize their loss in the thousand forms of busyness and distraction our culture provides. …

“The human animal is a creature of desire, and what it most desires is meaning, and what it most suffers is the loss of meaning. The autonomous judgment going on within each of us is a function of our psycho-spiritual reality. … (p. 116)

“…a Substantial gift of the therapeutic arrangement is to construct a holding place whereby the deconstruction of the old may take place, exigencies of the moment be attended, and watchful attendance upon that emergent be supported. …Most of the people we admire throughout history had difficult lives, but they shared a common trait—namely that they hung on until the new purpose of their life emerged for them, and they found the courage to live those new challenges. …

“What was most troubling to me as a child and as a young adult—namely, the presence of ambiguity and uncertainty—is today almost comfortable. This is because I have learned that whatever makes sense today will be insufficient tomorrow when I have larger questions, larger contexts, and more consciousness to bring to the table. I also know that wherever there is ‘certainty,’ there is either naiveté, unconsciousness, or defense against doubt. Wherever there is hysterical certainty, and there is much in our land, it is because doubt has already planted its black flag inside the soul and the ego is running away like a child. …” (p. 117)

“…In childhood, simple questions led to simple answers. Because the large questions led to ever-larger uncertainty, many of us shut down, stopped talking, stopped asking, and thereby stopped growing. But the same questions are still being asked in the unconscious: ‘Who am I? Who are you? What is this all about? Whither are we bound, and how am I going to live my life?’…[When our life summons us] Will we keep the appointment? Many, perhaps the great majority, never keep the appointment—never show up, thus lead lives of quiet desperation, suffer anesthetized souls, and have to continuously palliate distracted consciousness. Others show up because they have to. Keeping the appointment is where our lives find purpose—not in answers but in living large questions that are worthy of the soul’s magnitude.

And that is why the examined life matters.” (p. 118)

***

Insight, Courage, Endurance

How do we as individuals, survive difficult times?

I know everyone is a little bit different in how they view the world that we all share, including how they see themselves in it, and even in how they strategize how to personally make it from one day to the next with their sanity intact.

And for certain there are no easy answers to many of life’s most difficult challenges that we may face. But there are strategies that we can adopt—modes of thinking, acting, and being—that can help us make it through the rougher hours to witness the next dawn rising.

I of course, have my own opinions on the subject (and I’m pretty sure I wrote in a similar vein about this long ago), but the title above came from James Hollis’s book, Living an Examined Life:

The overall subject matter was on recovering our personal authority—you know—on “Finding Your Truth”:

“…Finding personal authority requires two things: sorting through the traffic within and living what we find with courage and consistency. In a letter in the 1950’s Jung observed that the work of being an evolved human being consists of three parts. Psychology can bring insight, but then, he insisted, come the moral qualities of the individual: courage and endurance. So having potentially come to consciousness, to have embraced insight as to what a dilemma is really about, one then has to find the courage to live it in the real world, with all its punitive powers, and to do so over time in the face of opposition both external and internal.

“The failure to understand this triune task—insight, courage, endurance—leads many to misunderstand the dilemmas we face in life…. (p. 21)” …

“…Perhaps the biggest haunting of our lives is the over-learned fact of relative powerlessness in a world of giants and mysterious, inexplicable, and inexorable powers. What is lost in this appraisal is, of course, the contrary fact that there is a magnitude of possibility in each of us, a core strength, and abiding resilience that brings us to the summons of life with an ever-increasing capacity to take it on. …of how some people find the resilient capacity to survive abuse, the loss of cherished others, and wounds to their self-worth, while others are blown away by the same events. It appears that it is not ‘what happens to us,’ but how we internalize what happens to us, how we manage it. What breaks some souls seems to energize others with resolve and determination. …(p. 84-85)

“…While learned helplessness is one of the functional definitions of depression, we all learned helplessness in our childhood experience. For some, this learning was truly traumatic and invasive, but even those most injured by life often demonstrate a renewed capacity for growth and development, an overwhelming resilience. …Few things will outlast the truly resolved, persistent person. ..We cannot give this strength to another, but we can mirror it in ourselves and remind others, stimulate and reinforce the inherent powers granted us by the life force. We learn by going though these fears, not by running from them and thereby ratifying their preemptive powers….” (p. 85)

“…In the end, we are haunted by the past, the denied permission to live a free journey. …We are haunted by bad theology, bad psychology, and bad social models into thinking we are defined by our history, by our race, by cultural heritage. We are haunted by the unexamined lives of our ancestors and caregivers. We are haunted by the wide-spread impression that history is the future. We are haunted by the limited imaginations of our complexes. And even more, we are haunted by the small lives we live in the face of our immense possibilities. Haunting is individual, generic, cultural, and extremely hard to challenge because it so often seems bound by generations of practice, ancestral fears, and archaic defenses of privilege. “(p. 85) …

“…Virtually every client with whom I have worked over the last four decades has had to struggle mightily to find a personal path, a journey that is right for him or her….” (p. 88)…

“….Jung observed that the greatest burden the child must live is the unlived life of the parent. I suspect equally that the greatest burden our souls must bear is ‘the unlived life’. There is something in us, all of us, that knows what is right for us, which path is ours and not someone else’s, something that pushes us beyond our comfort zone into areas of growth, development, and presence in the world greater than we have lived up to this point. …a link to larger energies, that course not only through us but also through the universe. “(p. 92) …

“This theme of powerlessness shows up time and time again as the inordinate influence of early models of self and world, self and others, and it shapes our inner paradigms. …the issue of permission is critical…Many of us were raised to be nice, to fit in, not to promote ourselves, and this somehow got translated into self-abnegation, self-criticism, and self-avoidance. It is not narcissistic to become—it is a duty. But who has ever heard that in his or her childhood? Very few, if any.” (p. 110) …

“In the superficial world of most psychological practice in the Western world, we are defined by our behaviors, which we are; thought constructs, which we surely have; and biological processes, which are self-evident. But such a definition of the human being leaves out the most important thing of all: we are a meaning-seeking, meaning-creating animal, an animal that profoundly suffers the disconnect from meaning….. As Jung put it in a letter once, ‘we have fallen off the roof of the medieval cathedral into the abyss of the self.’ And he further noted that modern depth psychology; the discipline that seeks to engage the whole person, to dialog with the inner world, ‘had to be invented’ because of the mythic dissolution that threw so many unprepared millions back on their own resources. …” (p. 111-112)

“…In the face of this loss of tribal links to the mysteries, the question of permission persists with ever-increasing urgency. If we are to grow up, we have to take on the invitation to self-determination, dialogue with the inner voice, answer the summons to an authentic journey—all quite contrary to the instructions (from parents, religious institutions, and society in general) to fit in. Growing up means, among other things, that I am accountable for my life, my choices, my consequences. …”

“…Growing up requires we accept that NO ONE out there knows what is going on, that they are as much at the mercy of their complexes and unconscious mechanisms as the least of us; and so now we must figure it out for ourselves. …” (P. 112)

“…Sooner or later a person has to understand and revisit the basics: we are not here for long; we are accountable for the life we have lived or not lived; we are summoned to choice, courage, and perseverance in living this life….. the question is asked: ‘Is this YOUR life or someone else’s, and are you responsible for it?’ … Whose permission is needed to know what you already know?… And then the ‘possible life’ opens before us, waiting only for our courage and resolution, waiting only of us to suit up and show up at last.” (p. 113)

***

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