Entropy, Dissolution and Integration | Identity Renewal

There are two general directions for humankind to go:

-< toward expansion | toward contraction >-

Those terms define a continuum that is an obvious metaphor for breathing as for life.

However, another sense of direction, another kind of continuum of life, is possible:

toward dissolution | toward integration

Human development and the rise and fall of civilizations move between these two poles:
  1. dissolution
  2. integration

These terms have to do with a universal process that underlies all of life-experiences:

entropy

Some describe entropy as a measure of disorder in a system.  The thinking is that a high-order system, whether a human being, an ecosystem, or a galactic cluster, has a certain amount of energy that it expends during its lifetime.  Energy moves from its "useful", available state to its "used", unavailable state.

Great balls o'fire!
The Universe is Runnin' Down!

Well, there's another way of describing entropy, more akin to our immediate experience.

It's the movement toward differentiation.

There's a special meaning to that word.  It means the appearance of new things that are different from the old things.  Newfangled vs. oldfangled.  Also, extant vs. emergent.

Diversity.

Diversity among things means diversity of the states
of things.  More stuff doing different stuff.  New stuff coming from new combinations of the old stuff.  Chemistry.  Science, The Information Explosion -- and subsequent information glut.  Culture clashes.  Social turmoil.  Politics.

More of everything diversifying.

That's another measure of entropy -- and -- another aspect of the Expanding Universe.

Bringing it back down to earth, it means that the unexpected happens.  New problems.  New solutions. New developments.  More and more of it.

Formerly unified and coherent features of experience, such as a harmonious social order free of Communists, atheists or sexual deviants -- or economic good times for oil men, money-men, chemical companies, or entrenched dictators, undergo unexpected changes, requiring human beings to undergo related unexpected changes.  Things break down.  They disintegrate.  Very unpopular among some, and everyone is affected, more or less.  Change.

And out of the debris of disintegration, a new order forms.  The general trend, in Universe, is for the new order that forms to consist of a higher, more finely tuned, and better-adapted integrity.  We can trace that kind of change by looking at the fossil record, as well as by looking at the extant biosphere.  We can trace it by looking at the path of civilization.  We can trace it by looking at the development of the Kosmos.

Entropy is not the running down of the Universe; it's the running of the Universe. As Buckminster Fuller put it, "doing more and more with less and less" -- until at last, doing absolutely everything with absolutely nothing -- which is how the Universe began.

More states of existence emerge as things move from "usable" to "used", from running to broken-down to newly integrated.  That's a definition of entropy.  The "used" side of things is the material for the next generation of "usables" -- one way or the other, whether by bacteria or by recycling programs.  Conditions require a higher, more functional integrity.  As things change, we must change.

Entropy, confronting us with unexpected disintegration, requires us to integrate in a new way.  Entropy drives us.

That's one half of the picture.

The other half is, what of all the human faculties that are not needed by the current state of affairs?  This includes all the ways we've learned and adopted, in the past, all inherited cultural development, all the old-time, traditional ways we remember that don't help the new integration.  What happens to them?

If they don't take over, there is a healthy alternative:  they dissolve, or at least become much looser.

In psychological language, habits are allowed to become extinct, and what was uptight becomes more laid back.  Groovy.

The extinction of, or liberation from, The Unnecessary liberates resources for application into The New Necessary integration for new conditions, as they emerge.  [Thomas Hanna's book, Bodies in Revolt, comes to mind.]  The caterpillar dissolves before integrating into the new form, we call a butterfly.

Entropy/Dissolution.
Integration.

The biggest challenge human beings face is that of letting go of the old well enough to become the new.  Memory is the key.  The Old sticks around because it is tenaciously Remembered, as a matter of survival or convenience.

What if what we remembered could be brought under our own control?  What if we could make internal adjustments that kept the old ways available, but not longer in control, so we are free enough to change as we see fit, instead of remaining stuck in unresolved quandaries?

What if there were something we could do to make room for new insights, new understanding, new ways of doing things, new ways of seeing things?  What if the elements of new ability were already present, but we couldn't bring ourselves to act in a new way?  What if we couldn't see them?

Well, what, if we could?

What if our very sense of identity prevented it?

What if we could shape our own identity, over time, through healthy dissolution of old patterns and new integration into healthier patterns?

THE KEY TO


Awakening, Approximation, and Precision

~~
Humans have an amazing belief in approximation and acceptance of approximations. How good is good enough? How precise do we need to be? A certain degree of approximation.

What we find is that humans are often content with a relatively crude approximation of something, with special cases of closer approximation.

Education is the process of learning to be able to attune to various kinds of experience. When the capacity for attunement first awakens, it does so in a relatively crude (approximate) form, as a painter/artist first blocks out large and general regions in her or his starting canvas (or whatever).  A certain somatic faculty, or intelligence, emerges. (Soma is more than reflexive flesh-body; "soma" is CONSCIOUS flesh-body; you are somatic.)

Capacity to recognize detail comes with the accumulation of memory -- provided the person pays attention. You've got to pay attention to accumulate memory and see detail.

The capacity to BE educated, however, depends upon a certain awakened attention and arising intention that WANTS to wake up in that way.

There's an old story about a certain person who approached a certain guru to ask to be his disciple.

The guru said, "You have to really want it."

The supplicant said: "I really want it!"

The guru said, "No, you REALLY have to want it!"

"I do!" the supplicant said.

"No. Let me show you."

And the guru stood up and said, "Follow me."

And they walked until they reached the riverbank.

The guru said, "Kneel at the edge of the water. Face the water."

The supplicant did as he was told, and with a gentle but decisive motion, the guru pushed the supplicant's head into the river and held it there.

In a few moments, the supplicant began struggling to get up so he could breathe. After a few moments, the guru let him go and the supplicant came up gasping.

"What did you do that for!!?" cried the supplicant.

"You have to want it that much!" said the guru.

Those of us who have worked through mountains of our own dysfunction (which means we were under mountains of dysfunction), feel what that story means.

That is why suffering is sometimes described as a form of grace: It gives us a strong impulse in a certain direction that the casual person generally doesn't have -- like the supplicant gasping for air.





copyright 2017 Lawrence Gold


Psycho-Active TetraSeed Transformations | The "Vajra" Self-Rectifying Processes

A T T E N T I O N:
P S Y C H O A C T I V E
 _____________________________
The Vajra Self-Rectifying Processes
ESPECIALLY POTENT WHEN COMBINED WITH THE TONGUE MUDRA

"Vajra" :  "Thunderbolt" and "Diamond" (Sanscrit)

~ The Lightening Bolt ~

~ The Hammer of Thor ~

~ The Thunderclap ~
(A Rumbling in the Canyon)

~ Pervasion of Experience by ~
~ Transcendental Intuition ~


The TetraSeed of Every Experience




A word in advance:
This entry contains instructions for procedures that, due to their simplicity, are advanced practices.

Known collectively as, The Vacuum Cleaner for Your Mind, they require sufficient control of your attention muscle to do them.  Without that adequate control, some may find that their thinking-word mind is producing too much noise -- noisier even, than The Vacuum Cleaner for Your Mind -- impossible for some, for now.

The key for those with "noisy mind" and "weak attention muscle" is practice of The Gold Key Release and The Crystal Crown Procedure.

In this entry, I present four procedures -- The Lightning Bolt, The Hammer of Thor, and The Thunderclap ("Flashing the Unknown Unknown"), and Pervasion of Experience by Transcendental Intuition -- that, when combined, provide a quick, nearly-instant way to disarm and dissolve grips seemingly held upon us held by fate (but actually, unconscious habits of mental distraction, self-contraction and distress), so they can be sucked out of your mind, right then. Mental quiet ensues.

Click to LISTEN

Gate` Gate` Paragate
Parasamgate
Bodhi! Svaha!


Gone! Gone! Gone beyond.
Gone beyond going beyond.
Awakening Intelligence! Beneficial!


~ The Prajna Paramita (Heart) Sutra ~



Rationale for the Lightening Bolt |
 (Walking Backward)

The Lightning Bolt is a back-door maneuver for surfacing and dissolving hidden grips that keep us buried in the momentum of our habitual lives, confused and stuck (but still hopeful !!! above all, hopeful !!!) Another term for that stuckness, from the Tibetan, is "dukkha". It's a "one foot on the accelerator, one foot on the brake" situation.

Those hidden grips show up as tendencies for things to go a certain way, in life, as behavior habits and kinds of personal experiences (e.g., "chronic bad luck") that color or flavor our sense of self, our presence, our way of life, personal qualities and the habits by which people recognize us ... all hidden grips or fixes resident in us, in our own memories.

These hidden grips show up as the chronic issues and ongoing complaints of our existence; perhaps unexpectedly, they also show up as the virtues we uphold. They are the hidden influences that shape our existence, a body or mass of unfathomably deep-seated, totally unconscious set tensions (e.g., the tension of, "on your mark, get set . . . . ." ) maintained perpetually on automatic:  all kinds of memory conditioning, residual influences from past experiences, sensations below where our attention can ordinarily reaches in ourselves -- unless flushed up enough to be recognized with techniques such as these. 

When flushed up, these set tensions are seen to major distortions in ourselves that when discovered, make us feel, "How it the world did I ever get that way??"  Before their discovery, these distorting influences work behind the scenes to causes us to act and react in certain ways and to experience the same thing, again and again, and again (e.g., bad relationships, frustrations, etc.).

Such distortions of self can be "blitzed" by The Lightning Bolt or shattered by The Hammer of Thor -- to dissolve away that part or aspect of ourself that we confuse with the basic reality of life and so believe is unavoidable.

We may artfully use The Lightning Bolt and The Gold Key Release, alternately, to good effect; one does "clean-up" after the other.

BACKGROUND:  Ever-Here-ness and Conditional Reality
We confuse conditional reality (everything we experience) with our fundamental sense of ever-hereness, which IS reality; we confuse (mentally fuse) conditional reality with Eternal EVER-HERENESS -- and the sign of this confusion is the feeling that things will never change (which is how it feels, whatever we may think). This confusion of EVER-HERENESS with memory gives memory an air of permanence, even while it's temporary.

I know this is a new idea, for you, so go over the previous paragraph and digest it until it sinks in and you know what I'm talking about. Do that, now.

EVER-HERENESS doesn't change -- and it ain't nuthin' in particular. It "always already IS".  It's the sense that no matter how fast you are moving (say, in a car), you are always, always, HERE, to yourself.

That example may give you intuitive recognition of, "that which has been the same all my life" -- which is not an object of attention (inner or outer), nor anything that can be intended, remembered or imagined, but your own, HERENESS.

It's what The Buddha called, "a tacit intuition".

Practice of The Gold Key Release dissolves the sense of "something-there-ness", so that we may intuit our formless presence, which, in that moment of intuition, we recognize as having always been OUR presence.

Again, these are not concepts for your mind to understand, but pointers to direct experience available IN THIS INSTANT.

When we catch that we are considering "EVER-HERENESS" to be "something we can locate", WE RECOGNIZE THE FALLACY OF IT being something because EVER-HERENESS is not a product of mind or an object of mind. It is of an order completely other than mind; it is "formless feeling", a kind of feeling that dissolves attention so we naturally intuit consciousness as a field, not as an object or concept. Again, return to the "moving in a car" example and then notice that it pertains, in this moment.

At that moment of recognition, we may release the sense of things that we have mis-identified as "EVER-HERENESS" and intuit the field of self-radiant awareness that underlies everything and that pervades us, ourselves.

Contrary to everything we have thought or have heard, Reality is unknown by us, unknown to us -- not a form of knowledge, at all, but a condition that cannot be reduced to mental memory.  Reality cannot be defined, however much we want to make it an object of mind that can be known mentally, the way you know a bowling ball.

The reason The Lightening Bolt works is that our habitual states are always forms of experience-with-limits -- or limited conditioning -- whereas Reality is inherently formless and only temporarily conditional.  Everything within Reality has a beginning and an end, a size and shape, a location where it is and where it is not. Reality has no size or shape, no location, no beginning or end.

When we let go of our sense of Reality, we are not letting go of Reality, but of conditions mis-identified as Reality, but which we have held onto as if  they were Reality, convinced by their persistence.

Better take a breather, on that one.  Start, again, when your mind has cleared as much as it will.

Said another way, when we do the release-step of The Lightening Bolt (The Hammer of Thor), we may think we are releasing the effort to intuit, identify, or locate Reality (our Here-ness), when what we are really releasing an erroneous mental effort that we confuse with Reality or that we believe points to Reality.

When we release the effort to intuit "Reality" (or "Now-ness", or "Here-ness"), we release the force of our conditioning along with it. What's left is the intuition of formless Reality.

I'm using a mental crowbar to pry you of your habit of believing that everything can be known and that your conceptual, thinking, word-mind is "where it's at". It ain't, but you're so used to going there that I need a crowbar.

Most strictly speaking, "Here-ness" is always already the case and always already our present condition.  Obviously.  We are always, already Here -- so anything we may do to intuit "Here-ness" is in addition to Here-ness and can only obscure our intuition of "Here-ness" as our already condition. The release that occurs in The Lightening Bolt only clears that way for that intuition.

The way to intuit Reality, or Here-ness, or "The Now", is to let go of it -- and any effort to intuit it.  Then, something entirely unexpected flashes forward or the way clears into it. Beyond these words, nothing useful may be said.

So, release The Lightening Bolt at the feeling of stuckness; or strike the blow of The Hammer of Thor upon it a few times in a row.  Notice the result.  It gets interesting.

The Lightning Bolt
Thus:
  1. In your memory, fully experience whatever experience with which you feel stuck and which you would like to dissolve, whether a negative condition, an ideal that you recognize compulsively traps you, or any arbitrary thing you might like to change.

    The steps are:

    1. Feel its existence. (one breath)
    [advanced:] Intend its existence. 
    2. Feel its persistence. (one breath)
     [advanced:] Remember its persistence. 
    3. Feel its location. (one breath)
    [advanced:] Attend to its location, as felt or experienced. 
    4. Feel its appearance (it's quality). (one breath)
    [advanced:] Imagine its potential for changing appearance.

    Do not think, ruminate about, or analyze it; that's not experiencing. Steady your attention on each step long enough for it to stabilize; you'll get an experience.  Remember:  If your thinking mind is noisier than a vacuum cleaner, you won't be able to do this. Prepare yourself with The Gold Key Release until you have sufficient control of your own mind.

    You do the advanced forms once you easily remember the basic steps.
  2. Feel it all as a single intensity that has a location and shape in your own "mind-space".
  3. Notice what is not that, surrounding that location and shape. Feel until your attention steadies a bit.  Relax into it. Let yourself lose track of that shape.

    (If you can't let yourself lose track and feel outside the shape, alternate between feeling the shape and what is not that shape. Notice what constrains you -- some tension or holding on. Feel that and continue.)

  4. Now, switch to noticing your sense of "Here-ness" -- that which has always been the same, all your life.

    ALTERNATE OPTION: Feel your whole body as the shape of a sensation.

    Notice what you do to locate, "Here-ness".
  5. That action of "locating Here-ness" feels like "centering" yourself. It's the target of the lightening-strike.

    ALTERNATE OPTION: Hold the sensation, draw and release three breaths.
  6. Recognize that sensation as a temporary, stressful effort. Stop holding onto it. Let it go. Lose track of it.
You will feel tensions dissipate, feel yourself reshape and probably sigh spontaneously as the experience dissolves partially or completely.

You have felt the experience of "stuckness" as it is . . . . . diffused your attention as much as you can . . . . . located and struck at the center of your sense of "persistent reality" and then dissolved it -- hence the name, The Lightning Bolt.

Imagine a little puff of smoke where your sense of "Hereness" or Reality used to be. (Just kidding, there.)

The Hammer of Thor
a recognition technique

The Hammer of Thor uses the power of intention to undo the effects of conditioning. It reveals how our own intention, running on automatic, keeps that conditioning in existence and relieves us of that conditioning either in big chunks or, in the case of extremely dense conditioning, layer by layer.

The structure of The Hammer of Thor is as follows:

Locate and identify the feeling of the condition or conditioning you want to pulverize and dissipate. This step is similar to the equivalent steps in the other procedures presented on this page. You may use variations of this step found in other procedures. Use what works well, for you. Once you've tested those procedures, this recommendation will be understandable and do-able (but not before).

Having located the feeling of the condition or conditioning to be pulverized, follow these steps:

Imagine remembering the feeling three times in quick succession.

Notice whether your intending it more than refusing it, or vice versa. Whichever it is start with the version for that bias and follow with the other version.

Think to yourself:

INTENDING VERSION
  1. Intending, with intent to experience the feeling
  2. Intending without intent to experience the feeling
  3. Intending intending
  4. Intending [the feeling]
: "Intending, intending, intending intending. Intending."

Scan the whole body, feel for and relax any effort.

REFUSING VERSION
  1. Refusing, with intent to experience the feeling
  2. Refusing without intent to experience the feeling
  3. Intending refusing
  4. Refusing [the feeling]
:"Refusing, refusing, intending refusing. Refusing."

Scan the whole body, feel for and relax any effort.
    Repeat to a satisfactory result (dissolution of the item).

    The Thunderclap / (a-Rumblin' in the Canyon)
    intensification by contrast and repetition
    Rationale
    The things we experience, presently, have a certain momentum (tendency to persist) to them, maintained by our memories of them. If we prefer things were different, those memories prevent change by occupying the space in which we would like to put a new experience. So, we have to dissolve the grip of memory, to make space.

    The Thunderclap consists of two parts.

    1. By alternating between remembering our current experience and imagining our desired experience, we loosen the grip and dissolve the density of the current experience.  That action is the part of the "Thunderclap" that creates the needed space.
    2. In the space created, we attend to and intend our desired experience.
      That "attending" and "intending" is a new reverberation in the world.
    Once you've created space and set up a new reverberation, persons and conditions around you that can resonate with your intention begin to do so and, as they show up, you will perceive in them a possibility of fulfilling your intention.

    You may use The Thunderclap to fulfill desires or to transform conditions -- to go beyond and then to go beyond going beyond.


    The Thunderclap is thus:
    1. Identify an experience you would like to have.
    2. Call up whatever you may remember about it.
    3. Imagine the possibility you would prefer.
    4. Return to your memory of how things have been.
      You will notice that your memories color your sense of possibility.

    Now, when the space is noticeably clearer:
    1. Imagine how it all might change.
    2. Remember how it all might change.
    3. Imagine how it all might change.

    Now, when your perception of how it all might change is vivid:
    Intend imagining it, one last time, to the degree you are able, and do The Lightning Bolt on it.

    Repeat to a satisfactory result. Each cycle through will be different.  The closer your imagining gets to your felt ideal, the easier it will be to intend it (push to have things change).



    Thus:
    1. Identify

    2. Remember
    3. Imagine
    4. Remember

    5. Imagine 
    6. Remember
    7. Imagine

    8. Intend.
    Repeat to a satisfactory result.

    Stages 2-4 and 5-7 are forms of reverberation and Step 8, like the ongoing rumbling of thunder.

    You will feel your imagination contact results that are more and more in line with your intention, with each repetition.

    If you have difficulty reaching a satisfactory result, do The Lightning Bolt and then return to The Thunderclap.

    Pervasion of Experience by Transcendental Intuition
    a conditional-attention unconditional-attention exercise

    All experience arises within and from the Unknown Unknown. We arise from and within the Unknown Unknown.  It's the mystery of, "before our birth", of "after our death", and of "before the very next moment".

    The Unknown Unknown may be intuited by noticing the totality of

    • what we see in this moment -- and what is beyond it
    • what we hear in this moment -- and the silence beyond it
    • what we feel in this moment -- and what is beyond all that

    This is not a thinking process (other than to get us started); it's a sensing and imagining process (possible only when your ability to pay attention to something is stronger than the attraction to thinking).

    A verse by Lao Tzu, found in The Tao Teh Ching, "points to" the Unknown Unknown:

    That which we look for, beyond seeing,
    and call the unseen,
    listen for, beyond hearing,
    and call the unheard,
    reach for, beyond grasping,
    and call the withheld
    merge beyond understanding in a Oneness
    that does not merely rise and give light
    set and leave darkness
    but forever sends forth a succession of living things
    as mysterious as the unbegotten existence to which they return.

    That is why men have called them empty phenomena
    with no face to meet, no back to follow.

    Yet one who is anciently aware of existence
    is master of every moment,
    feels no break, since time-beyond-time
    in the way life flows.

    This procedure depends upon your having sufficient mastery of your attention/intention/memory/imagination, to remain free of the strange attraction of thoughts and to direct yourself as you will.

    The procedure goes as follows:

    1. Identify your "item" (conditioning).
    2. Feel its location in you, the shape of its intensity.
    3. Switch: Feel it and all what is beyond it (radiationally outwardly) toward the space that contains it all.

      You cannot feel that space because it's the Unknown Unknown; what you can feel is your inability to locate it.
      Repeat steps 2 and 3 until the experience gets more vivid.
    4. Return to your item in the intuition of "inability to locate it". Bring that intuition ("inability to locate it") toward and then into your item.

      At first, you may not be able to locate your item, same as you couldn't locate the Unknown Unknown, at first.

      When your item reappears to your noticing, notice that it is a location of density within the Unknown Unknown, which pervades it.
    5. Feel the contrast between the density of your item and the trancendentality of the Unknown Unknown. Alternate.
    6. Stay with it until your item starts to lose its cohesiveness, to dissolve and dissipate.

    The actual doing of the procedure is much simpler than the words used to describe it. The first time is the most difficult. After that (if you have adequate control of your own mind), the process is readily available.



    other TetraSeed Transformation procedures 
    • The Middle-Way Memory Matrix Ritual*
    • The Crystal Crown Procedure 
    • The Set-Up Procedure*

      http://lawrencegoldsomatics.blogspot.com/2015/01/tetraseed-modulations-vajra-self.html

    The Gold Key Release
    CLICK FOR INSTRUCTION
    http://lawrencegoldsomatics.blogspot.com/2013/03/somatology-gold-key-release-for.html
    CONTACT:

    copyright 2017 Lawrence Gold

    SOMATOLOGY | The Ultimate Structure of All Senses of Identity

    A T T E N T I O N:
    P S Y C H O A C T I V E

    ______________________

        INSTRUCTION IN THE SOMATIC ABILITY   
          TO DISSOLVE THE HIDDEN GRIP OF AFFLICTION    
      OR THE COMPULSION TO BE ANYTHING, IN PARTICULAR  
                                         -- horse training --                                         
           -- You're the horse. | You're the trainer. --       

    Finding Ourselves Out 

    First thing:  I should know about what I'm talking about.  I'm an expert on identity formation, as I've been running and reforming this identity for years.  One of these days, somebody's going to find me out and we'll all end up in show-biz.

    In show-biz, to the degree that an actor/ess is free within his/her identity set and free to change, to that degree he or she can play different roles well.

    (This could be a clue.)

    No one of us has a single identity -- and that doesn't necessarily mean we all have Multiple Personality Disorder.  It means that our identity changes (more or less), from moment to moment, and in the circumstances of the moment, as we resonate with our circumstances.

    The one thing that persists in some way is the vague idea of "self" -- the one to whom this identity purportedly belongs.  People rarely talk about that one!  (It's our 'sacred cow' self -- the one "outside it all" and viewing it all, the one who ostensibly never becomes hamburger, supra-Kosmic or otherwise.)

    The expression of self changes, but the owner of it seems somehow the same: the secret identity.  The Continuity of Memory.

    But behaviors, and the provisional identity of the moment, fluctuate.  Which one is the "real" identity?  Ha-HAH!!!!
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    and now, a very important disclaimer:
    That doesn't mean that we're the political flip-flopper
    who flips and who flops with every passing wind
    whose words are as passing wind
    and whose meaning has no reliable connection to a functional outcome
    whose integrity has big gaps, or lots of little gaps
    whose principles are weak
    whose equilibrium is easily upset
    who takes an unstable stand
    the dependent
    who has too little active capacity to bring order,
    who is not yet educated enough
    to create forms with integrity,
    who has too little capacity to reverse the course of entropy
    in his environment and himself
    who uses the word, "fight", instead of "create"

    the secret nature of a mediocre nincompoop

    in a position of responsibility beyond him
    whose primary interest is
    to get rich and avoid getting into trouble
    to avoid any kind of crisis, lest he flub his response
    he, in a position of visibility,
    who fears to look like an incompetent

    -- or worse -- have to face consequences.

    Maybe it's what makes him a schlimazl
    for whom nothing good ever seems to happen
    since he can't marshal all the forces needed
    to make it happen.

    or makes him a shlemiele
    (closely related to a no-account fool)
    not good at much of anything,
    fallen back into being a good-for-nothing freeloader,

    an imbiber by days
    and something of a hapless dimwit at twilight
    walking into lampposts
    or, alas, maybe he's just a poor putz --
    a person who's a total loss
    uneducated
    unperceptive
    incomprehending
    wrong and insistent.

    Maybe he's a shmoygeh,
    or its sillier version, shmegeggie
    whatever that is

    a slob
    a nudnick (Pest!)
    or a no-goodnick in our eyes
    but look!
    He has a nice suit!

    NO! This is a smart person!
    a wonderful person!
    He cleans up after himself.
    He picks up his clothes.
    He can read.
    He's nice.

    He's also a clever person, having learned a thing or two.
    He knows the difference between
    "flip" and "flop"


    knows when it's OK to be flip
    and knows when his flippancy has flopped.

    Oh, most unflappable one,
    I see you keep your equilibrium pretty well --

    -- most of the time.

    You are intelligently mindful of how we are unavoidably
    affected by each other
    and inextricably interconnected,
    with everything unified in the present moment,
    not as an idea or ideal, but as a perception
    of how things actually are,

    feeling and observing how we are affected by this moment
    in a resonant and moving equilibrium
    continuous in moment to moment experience
    participating and yet mystified,
    faithful in nothing in this life made of change,
    in which the currents of our own existence
    carry murky, turbulent memories that shape and color our times.

    You sound like a wise man (or woman).

    How did that happen?


    ~~~~~~~~~~

    So, when I speak of identity, I'm not speaking of socialization or role.  I'm speaking of something much more fundamental, something that explains human behavior, how we get stuck in behavior, and how we may deliberately grow or evolve through an "unhooking" or "unlocking" process.

    To the point:

    Four steps are involved in identity formation:
    1. experience: the emergence of the "present" from the unknown: self, others and things, the momentary and total condition of "now" | Without the gathering and coalescing of attention and aggregations of memory, experience is void, without meaning, without significance, without object, just movements of the unknown
    2. memory : persistence of experience, the experience of "now" (immediate memory), meaning, recognizable events, holding on to experience and experiences, having experience "be in your face"
    3. identification: choosing to stick with a certain experience at any moment : assigning importance, assuming memory (persistence) is reality : taking remembered experiences of self as self and our perception of other things as "the way they really are." (The Myth of Actuality = "The Myth of the Given")
    4. perpetuation:  intending, inviting, seeking to make more, or refusing, seeking to make less, all motivation, all "go", all "stop", all spin, all involvement with, all imagining
    The four Stages of Things Becoming a Priority.  Obviously, I have to define my terms, so here goes.

    EMERGING EXPERIENCE: " BEING", BECOMING
    ("the One" multiplied by becoming "the Many")
    At every moment, we have a sense of "how things are".  It's our most obvious sense of the plain-old present.

    It consists of our experience of our situation and our sense of ourselves.  Most of this sense of experience is submerged in subconsciousness.  But we experience it every time we meet a new person and visit a new place.  It's our first impression -- which fades with familiarity, into the background.

    This first impression, or sense of the moment, is, at first, of "unknown" (yes, I wrote that rightly).  Our first impression is of "unknown".  Gradually, with enough time and enough exposure, "unknown" fades-in into "something known" -- a memory is formed. Until a sufficiently vivid memory is formed, no experience is being had.

    The motions of experience inscribe upon memory an ongoing trail, movements of attention from one thing to another.

    MEMORY : THE BASIS OF THE MOVEMENT BETWEEN HARMONY AND DIS-HARMONY
    We resort to memory as a proxy for (approximation of) actual experience, so we can more easily focus on experiences that have that pattern, and look for what's changing, moving, happening. It's beginning from a presumed base of knowledge.

     As we get familiar with anything, we form a memory of it.  That memory constitutes our knowing of "how things are".

    Then, the experience of the moment is seen always in terms of existing memories, which grow in a moving, changing pattern.  The growing edge of memory is experiencing what is emerging out of the unknown, clothing it in imagination so it may seem known, then forming memories and bridging them with other memories.  Impressions form over time about the "realities" of life, colored by memories brought to life by imagination, imagination informed by memory and going beyond.

    We form our memories from our experiences of the moving moment of life, the changing harmonics of life.  All sensory impressions that go into memory refer to movements and harmonics of life, memories of persons, places and things.  Our memories of "the movements and harmonics of life" flavor or dress up all of our sense-impressions of the moment.

    A memory of "a movement and a felt harmonic" gets called up every time we recall something and every time we put ourselves in a situation to experience anything familiar. Memory creates expectation.

    A way of finding the force of a memory is to notice how much it matters to you.


    ASSUMING MEMORIES are REALITY, TRUTH or SELF
    We give our memories the status of "truth", and memories of our own state the status of "self".

    To the degree that something feels, "in your face", that's the degree that you take it for truth, for reality, or as self.  That's how solidly set your / my attention is in memory, how solidly fixated, how ingrained, how entranced.  That's how much experience has "got us" by the ..... (ooch!) .

    PERPETUATING and/or REFUSING THE EXPERIENCES WE REMEMBER
    Persistence and resistance (or intending and refusing) are two forms of the same thing:  one is "wanting to make it more" and the other is "wanting to make it less"; the difference, only one of direction; both are "wanting".

    When someone "knows" something, they want (to some degree -- strongly or mildly) either to reinforce/assert their knowledge or to minimize/deny it.  They want to rely upon it or they want to forbid it.  Either way, they want to do that for themselves, for their own sake.

    By those acts, they form an attitude, a key part of the ability of identity to express itself, a felt memory.

    Once a person has an attitude, they want to impose it upon the world.  (Even the idea of "not wanting to impose it on the world" is an attitude.)

    That's the activity of identity, of self-propagation, the genetic imperative that distinguishes itself from others on the basis of memories.

    A case in point:  Take, for an example, ten year old Jimmy.
    experience
    Jimmy has never been to a baseball game.

    His father comes home with tickets to see the Cardinals.

    They go on a Saturday.

    At the ballpark, Jimmy takes it all in, eyes open wide.

    Dizzy Dean is pitching.

    He winds up.  There's the pitch.

    Foul ball.  Into the stands.

    Jimmy catches the ball.

    memories

    Now, Jimmy has a story to tell the guys in the neighborhood.

    What does that do for his social status?

    Jimmy likes the attention.  He brings the ball to school, he tells the story at Sunday School, around ...

    The more Jimmy tells the story,
    the more he reinforces the memory of it
    and his place in it.

    assuming memories are truth, reality, or self
    Jimmy takes credit for catching the foul ball,
    lays claim to special status, reason for pride.
    casts himself into a self-image that he takes for himself
    and shows around.


    perpetuating what we remember as extended forms of "self"
    Soon, Jimmy is a fan.

    He's read up on Dizzy Dean, knows his statistics,
    roots for the Cardinals,
    feels the glory when they win
    feels the humiliation when they lose.

    He's even gotten into a couple of fights over it.
    He can't help himself.
    But then, he's only ten.


    That was a long, long time ago.
    Now, Jimmy's a Republican.

    another case-in-point:
    George enlists in the army.
    Goes to war. It's his patriotic duty.
    He's sent to the front.  Wounded.
    Now he has a limp.  And a medal.

    He's honorably discharged and sent home. He gets special recognition, special privileges. (This was an earlier time.)

    He's sent to an innovative form of therapy that promises he can walk, again.  In fact, he'll lose the limp.

    But now, George doesn't know "who he'd be" without his war wound.  He'd seem ordinary.  He also can't imagine walking normally, again.  He's forgotton his "pre-army" state.  His wound and his status as a wounded war vet, based in memory and the seeming permanence of his wound, have made him into something else.

    The therapy doesn't work.

    He gets into politics.  Eventually, he runs for political office.

    Now, he gets some mileage out of being a wounded war vet.  His wound is his badge of courage.  He cherishes the identity of "War Vet", keeps it low-key on the campaign trail.  He imagines that it is some of the basis of the respect with which people treat him, that it's a "trump card":  On certain topics, no one dares challenge his position.

    And, of course, years later, he's a Republican.
    An identity is a standpoint with general ways of operating based on memories of experience, a standpoint that wants to reinforce (or perpetuate) its way of operating in the world.

    Everything we know, we want to continue to be "right knowledge".  That's why people dislike "being wrong" and why "being made wrong" is such a politically incorrect social impropriety.  It's about what "wanting to be right" means -- not having to change (to change is work!).

    So, first we experience something.  And then, as we experience it, we remember it.  Then, we assume that memory represents and actually says something reliable about either oneself or something or someone other.  We carry all the accumulated memory patterns that form out of the interaction of the world with our memoried self.  We act as if life exists in terms of those memory patterns -- and so act accordingly -- either to perpetuate and reinforce or to refuse or counteract.

    That explains how we form behavior patterns, how we get stuck in behavior patterns (egotism, arrogance, "anything goes" or cold-fish authoritarianism), and also how we learn to grow and evolve.  It's a spooky business.

    Just as we form innumerable memories from moment to moment, we form innumerable identities for each moment -- and hopefully they're all well interconnected, so we don't get trapped in one (dissociated identity state).

    The tricky thing about all this is how to avoid getting stuck in the sheer mass and momentum of accumulated memories.

    One answer is, to reverse the process.  What would happen for Jimmy if he imagined himself going back up the chain of identity formation?

    I present The Gold Key Release ( which a New Age Flower Child might call, "The Somatic Crystal Decrystallization Process", a soul brother: "Da Big, Divine Kosmic Kiss" (mmmWAH!) or, an academic professor, rather stuffily, "A Somatic Faculty") --- viz:

    (NOTE:  vizier = one who writes, "viz". 
    "Vizier" is Arabic for "wise guy".)
    "Somatic Awakening" is not an "awakening to" something. It's an awakening as something and then an awakening from it. 
    It's "awakening as" what one most ordinarily IS,
    scanning and observing it with attentiveness,
    feeling it, inhabiting it,
    enfolding it,
    assessing its "charge": how one feels implicated (entangled)
    in the force of memory,
    detecting the imagination of memory,
    then awakening from imagining,
    releasing the sense of "something there", feeling it dissolve
    into the formless field of attention, as no-self, original self, more familiar than breathing
    There. That. Which is Here.
    It's going backward through
    the stages of priority ("that which came before")
    "upstream" of the creative process,
    to awaken,  undefined, as self-source -- the Natural State, the awakening of which feels like A Big, Divine Kosmic Kiss, which we may symbolize by the word,

    "mmmmWAH!!!"

    which is also what it feels like, as we dissolve into the undefined Condition.

    See? No?  You will.

    1. He feels his position, attitude, standpoint, or whatever he is stuck with or is perpetuating -- his knowledge, his chosen identity, his refuge in the immunity of "rightness". 

      Whatever it is, it's a sensation, felt bodily, with a location, size, shape, and intensity in the overall body-sense (kinesthetic body, subtle body, etheric body, dream body -- whatever the name).  Feel each term.  Pretty similar, huh?

      It may occur to him that he may have "bought in to something" -- assigning the status of "reality" to his memory-shaped-colored perspective in the world: "the truth" or "The Truth",  "oneself" or "the Self". 

      It may occur to him that, that he does not "have" it, but that it "has" him -- that he lives "inside" it and is subject to its limitations, which he takes as Reality and not a product of his way of remembering and seeing things -- his perspective.  To him, it's solid, real, and consequential. The mood is, "This is real." or "This matters" (to a greater or lesser degree-- but note: If something makes a difference to you, you've bought into it and it has you.)

    2. He feels how much of this sense of "solid truth" or "things mattering with consequences" feels like memory and how much of memory feels like imagination.  It's a "feel" thing, not an "answer" that he comes up with. He traces the feeling from the sense of solid truth to memory to imagination.

      He imagines, moment to moment, that a scenario -- of which he is a part -- is developing and he has expectations -- informed, in part, by memory, and his perceptions are shaped and biased by memory.
    3. Remembering is re-imagining something into our experience. The seeming persistence, the solidity or reality of anything you can put your attention upon is memory.  Memory fades unless refreshed by imagining.  The denser the memory, the more persistent it is.

      The way we do it:
      We put attention on the feeling of having some experience. 

      We sense the feeling of experience without words,
      as a sensation someplace within us
      We feel its size, shape, intensity.

      We pump up our ability to sense our somatic state
      with "attention maneuvers".

      We sense how much (not "what") intention we have toward it
      We notice how steadying attention solidifies intention.

      We feel the whole package as a single, contained force:
      the thing we are experiencing
      and our intention toward it made solid by attention.
      How intention*attention = memory.

      Now, we feel how much it matters
      in order to bring ourselves into the picture
      and acknowledge how much we are involved.
      How much it matters has to do with our relation to the world.
      Observe it, when you get around to doing a Gold Key Release.

      We may then own the intensity of the memory
      even if we don't know or understand when the memory is
      and we may sift that intensity
      to find the feeling of imagining.

      We feel how much it feels like "solid reality", how much feels like memory, and how much of the memory feels a bit like imagining (or as we like to say, "daydreaming" or "being entranced"). 

      We feel "remembering" and "imagining" and alternate between them until we can zero in on each equally steadily and equally easily, and so can balance them.  What makes it easier to alternate more to one side than the other is that we are more entranced by it.  These words make sense with experience, but perhaps not before.  Save yourself the brain-fog; instead of "trying to figure it out", just do it (at least once).

      If you have trouble with this step, deliberately remember something.  Feel what remembering feels like.  Then imagine something.  Feel what imagining feels like.

      Now apply those distinctions to your sense of "solid truth".


    4. Feel the dissolution of his "fix" (or fixation) -- the thing he has been perpetuating -- as his discovery or sense of "how much of it is imagination" is "the little valve" through which the "air" that has inflated his sense of "solid truth" (and ego) escapes.  Simpler if he just does Step 3. (Imagination is easier to let go than "solid truth".)

    5. He takes a breath, lets go of the imagining, and falls toward (or into) his identity-less, natural state, at least for the moment. (Don't do this while driving or try to understand this by reading it.  Do the procedure. Do it well at least once.)
    6. He checks the remaining intensity of the feeling.  If anything is left, he starts at Step 1.
    QUESTION:  Would he quit being a Republican?

    I ask you.

    From here, we go to the first "magical" process for decrystallizing crystallized identity patterns:


    The Gold Key Release
    CLICK FOR INSTRUCTION
    http://lawrencegoldsomatics.blogspot.com/2013/03/somatology-gold-key-release-for.html
    CONTACT:

    copyright 2017 Lawrence Gold