Relieve Sciatica Pain and Piriformis Syndrome: Pitfalls | Causes and Treatment Approaches

Sciatica is commonly regarded as difficult to cure. It is, when you take one of the wrong approaches -- the approaches most commonly used to stop the pain: drugs, stretching (including an inversion table or spinal decompression device), adjustments or manipulation, TENS (electrical stimulation), surgery. If you do, your final relief may take forever. None of these approaches gets at the underlying cause, so relief is partial, temporary, or may never occur to the point that you are free of sciatica and can move freely.

This article presents an approach that gets to the heart of the matter, one that can end sciatica in a few weeks -- but there is a catch: you have to do the work.

YOUR CHOICE of APPROACH

Commonly, what keeps people trapped in sciatica is the entire approach they take to getting free of it. So, before I explain the condition, itself, to you, I'm going to address the approach that people (maybe you) take toward "curing" it.

There are two ways you can approach sciatica: as a "consumer" of care and as a "do-it-yourselfer".

A "consumer" expects to pay someone for their expertise and have them "do it for them". "Expertise" includes the "expertise" of the pharmaceutical companies. The consumer turns to experts, or to their products, to "fix" him or her. The consumer doesn't want to have to understand; that's what s/he pays the expert for.

A "do-it-yourselfer" learns about the condition to the point of arriving at an understanding of its cause that makes sense -- and then does what it takes to get the required result.

With sciatica, you can't be a consumer and get the relief you seek. Sciatica doesn't work that way; it's not that kind of condition. It's not caused by something external, so that you can do or take an "external" approach and fix it. Nor, in most cases, is it a "spinal disorder" caused by a mechanical breakdown or deformation. (When those exist, they are an effect of the underlying cause) It's caused by something your body is doing to itself. It's caused by muscular activity.

This article explains what your body is doing to itself (really, what you are involuntarily and unconsciously doing to yourself) to cause the pain and what you can do -- not to counteract it, but to cease doing it. When you do, the pain fades out and everything is all right, again.

If you are going to get free of sciatica any time soon, you're going to have to understand what's going on in you and be a do-it-yourselfer.

If you doubt me, continue with the "consumer" way of operating until you see its failure. Then, you may come back here, learn what you need to learn, and become the do-it-yourselfer you need to be to end your sciatica.

The word for today is, "pitfall."

Definition of PITFALL
1 : TRAP, SNARE; specifically : a pit flimsily covered or camouflaged and used to capture and hold animals or men
2 : a hidden or not easily recognized danger or difficulty

In this post, I'm going to deliver some strong medicine toward your relief of sciatica and also of sacroiliac joint dysfunction (of which sciatica is one symptom). I'm also going to provide a link to a post explaining who I am and my background. At the end, I'll point you to where you can do something for yourself, for free, and where you can get more, if you want.

THE PITFALL
To start, the pitfall into which most people with sciatica fall is not the pain of sciatica or of sacroiliac joint dysfunction. That's not the pitfall. The pitfall is the mood and approach you take to getting relief from these conditions -- possibly the way you approach your entire life.

The pain is just the emergency that drives you into your way of seeking relief.

The pitfall is the mood of "action without understanding".

Along with that may be a kind of submissiveness you may have to medical authority -- a submissiveness that obediently takes the pain meds or accepts the TENS unit or does the physical therapy stretching and strengthening exercises or takes massage, or uses an inversion table or spinal decompression device, or goes for surgery.

SUBMISSIVENESS, UNWARRANTED
It's a submissiveness that is unwarranted because those measures don't work. They don't succeed at getting you free to move like a normal person. This submissiveness to authority may be the way you run your entire life -- the submissiveness of a consumer to medical authority that may also show up as skepticism or even aggressiveness toward anyone who claims a greater authority than medical authority. 

A mood of submissive dependency on authorities is understandable, as long as you're not aware of anything better than what they offer. It's not understandable, rational, or responsible if the authority to which you submit isn't producing the result you need. In that sense, it's almost like a bad romantic relationship.

I'm here to remove the legitimacy of that mood of "action-without-understanding" by providing understandable, sensible, actionable information.

I recently joined a sciatica-relief group on Facebook. The first thing I did was to pose the question: "Who here understands the underlying cause of sciatica?" I got a response from one person whose stated understanding, "a spinal disorder", combined with "surgery worked for me", was the full extent of his understanding. This is no understanding, and it the exemplifies the submissiveness to medical authority that I am talking about.

Before I go into any of the explanation of the underlying cause of most sciatica, which you will find easy to understand, I'm going to address a general mindset of most people with sciatica, if this Facebook group is any indication, a mindset that is fostered by the approach of the medical profession. That mindset is, "Just get rid of the symptoms. Never mind the underlying cause." It's the mindset of expediency and acceptance of mediocre results, not of the uncompromising demand for final relief.

This mindset of expediency -- a mood, again, of helpless submissiveness -- is not one that takes final responsibility for results. It's the mindset of avoidance of pain, of avoidance of inconvenience, of assigning responsibility to someone else, or of adopting hopeful measures without real understanding -- not the mindset of identifying the real problem, handling it, and stopping the pain, that way.

Again, this is understandable, given people's indoctrination into submissiveness to medical authority, and perhaps even to all authorities simply because they are considered authorities -- perhaps based on lack of knowledge of something better, perhaps based on an upbringing (or educational experience) that demanded submission to authority.

However, it isn't adequate to solving the problem -- and neither is commiseration between people who have the same pain, although I can understand why one might do it to vent feelings.

While commiseration without an understanding of the underlying condition may lead to kindly suggestions intended to be helpful, suggestions-without-understanding are likely to lead to disappointment and to further despair. They commonly do. A mood of helplessness then prevails and the mood of submission to authority that can't produce the required result has been reinforced.

There's a point at which people have to take more responsibility or responsibility of a different kind -- the responsibility to understand. This is that point.

At one point, the one person who responded to my initial questions said, "I don't know. I am not a doctor."

The difference between you and a doctor is knowledge and training.

I am here to provide better knowledge on this topic than you can get from your doctor or therapist. What makes it better is that (1) it makes sense and (2) it points to an approach that works – that works relatively quickly and very reliably. I'm also here to point you to a kind of self-training that will get you out of pain in a space of, say, weeks.

To review, I've just indicated two approaches:
• one that works with understanding and gets consistent good results by addressing underlying causes
• another, that acts without understanding to seek symptomatic relief by addressing secondary effects, not the underlying cause, that doesn't work consistently, but which may be sanctioned by medical authority (because that's all they know) or recommended by someone trying to be helpful

You've tried one. Are you willing to try the other?

One might think that, having been searching for information about sciatica, you'd be on the lookout for something other than what you've already experienced, or heard about. I'm asking you to exercise your intelligence toward understanding, not merely to believe an authoritative voice (including mine) or a sympathetic one.

UNDERSTANDING SCIATICA

Most sciatica comes from entrapment of nerve roots of the sciatic nerve that exit the spine at levels L3 through L5 – the bottom three vertebrae of the low back.

There's nothing wrong with the spine -- unless one or more disks have ruptured. It's that the vertebrae are being pulled too closely together by tight spinal muscles that increase the lumbar (low back) curve, combined most often with a side–tilt caused by tightness of the muscles of the side of the trunk. These two locations of tightness change the curvature of the spine and trap (squeeze) the nerve roots on the inner side of the curve.

The tightness comes from a combination of (1) long-term stress, in which the back muscles tighten and stay tight, and (2) an injury to one side of the body at some point in life that prompted the muscles of the side of the trunk to tighten in a reflexive cringe response and stay tight. That's it. Read on, after you have absorbed that information.

By the way, it's that same tightness that over-compresses disks and causes them to bulge, herniate, or rupture.

A less common form of sciatica, known as piriformis syndrome, involves tightening of the piriformis buttock muscle, also usually triggered by an injury, e.g., from a hard fall onto the buttock. The piriformis muscle squeezes the sciatic nerve that passes through or nearby, and sciatica results.

Your job, should you decide to accept it, is to retrain your muscular control to relieve yourself of the tightness causing your symptoms. It can be done by almost anyone and can be done relatively quickly, with the right technique: pandiculation.

As I said there's probably nothing wrong with your spine. It's an ongoing muscular activity that you can retrain, that causes most sciatica.

You can't change that ongoing muscular activity with drugs, surgery, or stretching. Strengthening, a common strategy of therapy, is altogether out. Think about it. How can strengthening cause a relaxation of too tight muscles?

Those are the two most common forms of sciatica. I've written more at length on two other causes in the article linked below, but this is essentially all most people need to know.

https://somatics.com/sciaticasymptoms-piriformissyndrome.htm

In case you still believe in the usual methods of physical therapy and bodywork, here's another video entry, The Three Biggest Mistakes Made by People Who Are Trying to Get Out of Pain.

I've explained the pitfall into which you may have become trapped: going for relief of symptoms without addressing the underlying cause -- and the related pitfall of dependency on drugs, surgery, and manipulation and the hope that something somebody does to you or for you will get you out of pain. I've explained the origin of that pitfall: your indoctrination into dependency on others -- and failing to take "won't take 'no' for an answer", personal responsibility for results. I've provided information by which you may understand your condition and the means of your taking responsibility for getting yourself out of pain.

The final obstacles may be that people's attention tends to be superficial -- sometimes, new information doesn't penetrate enough, but bounces off -- and some people don't want the information just because to change requires something of them. That's what sometimes makes learning, in general, difficult. (Did that just bounce off or did it sink in?)

I've identified what I call the prime directive of my field, clinical somatic education: "You gotta wanna". It's up to you. I ain't just whistlin' Dixie.

BACKGROUND
I have been practicing as a clinical somatic educator (Hanna somatic education) for the final relief of pain since 1990, with two years' experience on-staff at the Wellness and Rehabilitation Center of a hospital in Northern California. Since 1996, I have had a money-back guarantee of satisfaction that has rarely been invoked. Learn about my professional background, including published papers, radio and TV appearances, and public speaking appearances, here.

• get started bringing yourself relief: Gentle Spine Waves free downloadable video-app (Android) | https://somatics.com/apps/GentleSpineWaves.apk
• on my personal background | http://lawrencegoldsomatics.blogspot.com/…/the-prophet-of-p…
• on sacroiliac joint dysfunction (sciatica is one of the symptoms) | http://lawrencegoldsomatics.blogspot.com/…/understanding-sa…

CONTACT:

How to End Sciatica in Weeks instead of Taking Forever | piriformis syndrome | Santa Fe, NM 87508

Understand sciatica. | exercises for sciatica leg pain |…

SOMATICS.COM

How does Hanna Somatic Education Work?

The following explanation makes sense of Hanna Somatic Education and gives people a way to talk about it that makes sense to their friends.

To begin with, it helps to understand why people get stuck in pain and discomfort. Then, you can understand what Hanna Somatic Education "handles" and how it handles it.

About 50% of chronic, severe pain can be traced to the effects of muscular contractions formed by physical injuries and high-stress emotional states. What follows, below, applies to that kind of pain -- and not the pain that results from organic diseases.

Here are the key terms:

• muscle-memory (muscle:movement memory)
• sensory-motor amnesia

Muscle memory is what you formed when you learned to walk, to ride a bicycle, to ski, to touch-type on a keyboard (as speed-typists do), or hunt-and-peck type (as in everyone who uses a smart phone or operating-system based device with a miniature alphanumeric keypad, does).

Sensory – motor amnesia is what happens when a  high-intensity memory forms, either from a high velocity experience or a prolonged one, a high-intensity memory that interferes with muscle movement memory of how we are, when we are free to move. Sensorimotor amnesia occurs, generally, in a state of activation triggered by something that's happening. When a triggered state of activation becomes a remembered state of activation, a remembered state of activation becomes a general state of activation.

"General state of activation"means an ongoing state of activation, a kind of readiness for experience based upon learning about experience.

Much of the pain that we endure in life has to do with generalized states of activation that have become submerged in the obliviousness of familiarity. In other words they are there, still activated, but, our awareness of them has become subdued. We may intuitively feel how that is so.

Because our awareness of them has become subdued, our control of them has diminished.

That's how a personality forms. It's how a tension set forms. It's how a chronic feeling state forms. It's how our condition forms. It's how our complaints form.

It's memories affecting how we move.

Movement involves the muscles -- and of course, other systems.

Let's talk about the muscles.

Any talk about action involves talk about muscle tension and relaxation of tension. Every state of readiness involves a heightened state of tension.

Memory shapes readiness.

Memory shapes muscular tension.

Injuries form intense memories.

Memories are states of readiness. Always.

Injuries form intense states of readiness, heightened tension, ongoingly. Heightened tension, after a short while, becomes painful -- not just psychologically, but also bodily.

The key to the pain are the memories.

Hanna somatic education cleans up muscle movement memory. By cleaning it up, we eliminate unnecessary states of readiness, unnecessary states of tension, unnecessary discomfort, unnecessary limitation of movement.

The pain people bring to a Hanna somatic educator is the pain of residual conditioning by experience in which they hold and stay tight, habitually, but without recognizing they are doing so: sensorimotor amnesia.

So, in a roundabout way, we've just covered "what"  Hanna somatic education handles.

Now we start on the "how".

Sensorimotor amnesia is another term for the muscle-movement memory of natural maturation "influenced" by the muscle movement memories of injury and prolonged stress. Hanna somatic education is a way of teaching people to take back influence over themselves, or to throw off the lingering influences of past experiences -- in this case, the lingering influences of past injuries and stress periods that lead to cumulative, muscular tightening up that "becomes who they are" (but are not).

What we need to do is to delete the automatic impulse to tighten up, to make "starting from rest" the default or customary disposition. The first way of doing that is to make them aware of the impulse to self-tighten. And then teach them to stop tightening themselves up -- not by effort to remember not to tighten up, but simply by not tightening up, in the first place, unless they mean to. They start at rest instead of from a an automatically-disturbed state of readiness. (Consider the mind of such a person.)

That's what the techniques of Hanna somatic education, and the intention behind their use, is. It's to teach people how to free themselves of conditioning influences, so they can feel more like themselves.

That, by the way, is the stated intention of many disciplines, but is most clearly stated as the intention of bodywork and somatic disciplines, in general. Some approaches are more effective than others.

When it comes to muscles, it means to awaken better control over our own tensing and relaxing of our muscles, of ourselves.

What Hanna somatic education does is clean up muscle movement memory so we can feel more like ourselves, when we are all right.

Hanna somatic education cleans up muscle movement memory and then improves it.

Result:

• movement, better
• pain, gone
• ability restored and enhanced

Hanna somatic education cleans up muscle movement memory.

Everything else that may be said would be the particulars of techniques and of somatic education exercise patterns – details that you might try to liken to therapies or exercises you already know. That might give you the wrong idea, if your ideas are based on approaches that work from the outside in, “on” you.

Hanna somatic education doesn't involve techniques that someone applies to you. It involves techniques of teaching you to get back influence over yourself. It's an outside-in AND inside–out job. That's why it works. We use an action or movement pattern "hard-wired" into us, programmed into everyone (and their dog), one related to yawning, called, "pandiculation". Yawning is pleasurable because it releases some of our tension. Hanna somatic education applies this "hard-wired", natural action pattern to clean up muscle-movement memory.

And by the way, because we're working with the programming side of things, meaning our memory conditioning, it works quickly and efficiently, in harmony with our influence over ourselves. Because it works in harmony, it works far faster than approaches that attempt to counter muscle-movement memory instead of dissolve its grip and then organize it. Being "worked with" works far faster and better than being "worked on".

Hanna somatic education works by cleaning up muscle movement memory that influences us in how we move and how we feel.

Muscle movement memory.

That's how Hanna somatic education works and what it does.

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Non-Attachment, by Itself, is a Heresy | The Middle Way Neither Includes nor Excludes Attachment; It Transcends It

The following is a very simplified and concise discussion of two items. One is the Buddhist doctrine of impermance or non-attachment, the perspective of the TetraSeed and its somatic manifestation. 

Because of the simplicity and conciseness of this discussion, you may feel like its zipping by without your comprehending it. If that's the case, you have two options I can think of. One is to re-listen, and the second is to take the state of bewilderment that you may be experiencing and subject it to The Gold Key release without further attempts to understand. Then, you may return to this discourse with a much easier comprehension.

Non-Attachment
The cultivation of non-attachment goes with the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence, which states that all experience is impermanent and that attachment is the primary cause of suffering, in life.

The expected reaction of someone exposed to this doctrine, who is serious about getting free of suffering, would be to seek non-attachment, to oppose attachment. This would be an error because it would involve suppressing attachment, would involve self-denial of desire, rather than releasing attachment. It then becomes attachment to non-attachment, or attachment to self-denial.

The significance of non-attachment, which more properly goes with the doctrine of impermanence than self-denial or opposition to attachment, is capacity for, and participation in, change. Change, not adherence to self-denial, is the opposite of attachment.

A way of better appreciating this difference, is to understand the four-part structure of individuated consciousness and of all experiencing:  the TetraSeed.

The TetraSeed
composed of

ATTENTION:LOCATION | INTENTION:EXISTENCE | MEMORY:PERSISTENCE | IMAGINATION:EMERGENCE

may be regarded in terms of MATRIX and VALVE
or BODY and MOUTH.


THE SUBJECTIVE ASPECTS OF THE TETRASEED

The MATRIX:BODY consists of

ATTENTION:LOCATION | INTENTION:EXISTENCE | MEMORY:PERSISTENCE.

The  MATRIX:BODY  is the "body of condensation" or "body of consolidation".


What's condensed or consolidated is whatever has come in through the opening, the valve, the mouth, of IMAGINATION:EMERGENCE.

THE SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE ASPECTS
of the TETRASEED, INTEGRATED


Like a MOUTH, IMAGINATION opens to ingest and closes to permit digestion into MEMORY. Short-term MEMORY takes what is in the MOUTH of IMAGINATION and "chews it over" (analyzing and distinguishing finer features: DISINTEGRATION); long-term MEMORY swallows and digests. (INTEGRATION)

IMAGINATION and MEMORY are counterbalancing opposites the way taking in food and swallowing are counterbalancing opposites: You can't do both at the same time; it's one or the other, though one feeds into the other.

Actually, we never experience memories as memories.  We always recall memories into existence by imagining them, just as we memorize something by repeatedly imagining it to ourselves. Memories, by themselves, are patterns that are unknown until we recall them by imagining them. (That's why memories are unreliable.)

ATTENTION and INTENTION are differently related than MEMORY and IMAGINATION. MEMORY and IMAGINATION trade off or alternate; ATTENTION and INTENTION synchronize and combine in the same moment.

Capturing, condensing and consolidating are INTEGRATION.

Something coming in through the opening of IMAGINATION:EMERGENCE always involves DISINTEGRATION. It always involves NEWNESS.  (If it's not NEWNESS, it's PERSISTENCE, and if it's PERSISTENCE, it's MEMORY, not IMAGINATION). Newness always involves DISINTEGRATION of the status of memories that have persisted to make way for new INTEGRATION, an altered viewpoint.

INTEGRATION:DISINTEGRATION:INTEGRATION

and DISINTEGRATION
and INTEGRATION
and so on.

IMAGINATION is the mouth of the TetraSeed.

MEMORY is the digestive tract of the TetraSeed.

ATTENTION and INTENTION are the senses and MOVEMENT SYSTEM (e.g., muscles and bones).

ATTENTION and INTENTION are yang/outgoing.
IMAGINATION and MEMORY are yin/incoming.

Beware of taking non-attachment to the extreme -- meaning, overlooking the counterbalancing function of memory, persistence, endurance -- attachment. Extreme non-attachment is "spiritual by-passing" -- the action of avoiding the work of personal transformation in an idealistic effort to experience what is Transcendent/formless. The formless intuition "surfaces" when the disturbances of personal immaturity and/or maladjustment resolve with the awakening and balancing-integration of the four facet/flexpoint pairs of the TetraSeed.

Life involves both persistence (apparent permanence) and change (or the movement of impermanence). Each needs the other for a balance between DISINTEGRATION and INTEGRATION. Each has its place.

a final word on the MATRIX (CONSOLIDATED MEMORY)
and INCOMING NEWNESS (IMAGINATION):

Every experience, even now, consists of two aspects:

1. CONSOLIDATED SUBSTANTIALITY
2. QUALITIES or BEHAVIORS

You look at or listen to something, you feel "something is there". That's consolidated substantiality.

Then, there are the qualities of what is there, including all of its relationships with everything else.

Every possible experience has the same sense of  "something" there-ness, or substantiality -- though the density of the substantiality varies.

Every possible experience has a different set of qualities, in the most ordinary sense.

The sense of something-there-ness is the sense of self-densification, the sense of attention to a memory or persistent "something" -- and the intention to have an experience of it, one way or the other -- all at once and in the same place. It's what is known as, "the self-contraction". It's a feeling. We experience everything by means of self-contraction. (It seems to me that that's what Adi Da meant, when he wrote, "The act of perception, itself, is the avoidance of relationship." ~~ The Knee of Listening by Franklin Jones/Adi Da Samraj)

That means that, with contemplation and practice to make one capable, every experience can be recognized as the feeling of consolidated ATTENTION, MEMORY, and INTENTION -- all in the same place as a single feeling, that singular "feel" of "consolidated something", which is self-contraction. (It seems to me that that's what Adi Da meant when he said that, at some point, one no longer needs to look into the garbage bag to see what one is throwing away; one just looks at the bag (the feeling of self-contraction) and recognizes, "Ah! Garbage!"  ~~ Garbage and the Goddess, by Bubba Free John).

Recognizing self-contraction, sufficiently, as ATTENTION:PERSISTENCE:INTENTION, self-contraction can be released entirely independently of the qualities of the thing being released. It's a shift of perspective from ingesting incoming experience (getting involved with it) to recognizing self-contraction in any form of experience as a "self-activity" -- a self-activity that can be desisted from (stopped or ceased) merely in the noticing of "something there" -- without need for analysis, figuring out, identifying what something is or means, reasoning about it, wonderings about "right" and "wrong" and what to do about it. It's the very soul of non-attachment through intelligence, not through an idealistic cutting off of self from experience.

This is a radical (at the root) approach to experience. Instead of "taking a position" relative to some experience, we dissolve it (or release it). That capacity for release is the meaning of non-attachment. It's the release that is our capacity to change, to participate in an even or fair way with the flow of impermanence that allows incoming imagination (creativity) to flourish. It's "emptiness" or "space" -- like the capacity of a vessel -- whether or not the vessel happens to contain anything, at the moment. It's not the "non-attachment" of refusal or self-denial, of "cutting off of all attachments" (which is a way of being idealistically full of itself, enforcing an erroneous understanding of emptiness or of non-attachment.) It's non-attachment as capacity to change.

It is acceptance -- not as fatalism about fate, but as the "open mood" of the space where something limited once resided, space that can now accommodate something new. It's receptivity, the space liberated by dissolution of "remembered point-of-view" space where unknown newness is allowed to develop and emerge as the new memory of this very moment, of ever-new self as the expression of that very space, rather than of biased and unreliable, self-held memories. It is spontaneous and also allows the free functioning of memory and so retains its intelligence.

This "acceptance" has a very interesting behavior: When all four aspects of the TetraSeed, (i.e., all four operations/drives/intelligences) sufficiently and consciously come "on-line" and are balanced and integrated with each other, in the context of, or in terms of, any kind of experience, that experience becomes as if "transparent"; it loses its feeling of density, while retaining its functionality, even at a superior level. It becomes "transparent" to the formless Ground of Being that is its source and very substance.

Search on YouTube for keywords, "Adi Da point of view".

The Gold Key Release
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CONTACT:

copyright 2017 Lawrence Gold

Imagination and Memory, Together, Act Like Valve and Reservoir

I've kept coming back to the same thing in my experience, so I want to put it out there: It seems to me that in the TetraSeed, the aspect we call, "imagination", operates as a valve, opening and closing.

When imagination is closing, attention and intention are turning toward memory, closing in on memory.

When imagination is opening, attention and intention are turning toward imagining, opening to imagining.

Feel that?

Somas (living beings) open toward or close away from experience.

Attention and intention focus the power of attention on what is remembered in memory, or focus the power of attention on what is emerging in imagination.

I'll say that again.

Attention and intention focus the power of attention on a memory - or - attention and intention focus the power of attention on what is emerging in imagining. Attention and intention focus the power of attention on a memory -- or --  attention and intention focus the power of attention on what is emerging --  in the making -- in imagination.

In closed-minded individuals, memory dominates imagination by habituated intention. Memory "suffocates" imagination.

In open-minded individuals, imagination exceeds memory by free attention.

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Living Experience is a Four-Part Harmony

Every possible kind of experience can be understood in terms of a four-part harmony of four basic operations of mind. These operations of mind are familiar to everyone -- more or less.

The are:

INTENDING | IMAGINING | REMEMBERING | ATTENDING TO

not in any specific order, but all happening at once, together.

A basic understanding of each of these operations is a start in the direction of experiencing them, awake, in your own case. So, start there.

Take any subject, any subject, at all, and look at it through the slant of each of these four competencies.

Imagine intending something without remembering what you are paying attention to.
OR
Imagine remembering something without paying attention to it.
OR
Imagine attending to something without remembering to intend to imagine it.

These three slants on experience -- examples, and there are more -- are psycho-active mental exercises to give you a sense of the direction of experiencing these co-efficient competencies awake in your own case.

All movement and all cognition exist as these four aspects, these co-efficient competencies.

It is not a merely mental matter of understanding some concepts. That, as I said, is the start. The three slants rang your bell, a little bit. Some very interesting things happen, as you systematically use the four co-efficients of competence MATRIX as a way of coming up to speed in areas where one or more of them have been co-deficient.

Coming "on-line and up to speed" in an integrated way changes the underpinning of our behavior. Our expressions ride upon a MATRIX, a matrix is that is sensory:motor | subjective:objective:

the four co-efficients of competence.

The presentation will bring attention to the four co-efficients of competency, highlight each and connect the words and ideas to immediate experience, which will involve very simple exercisings of intelligence:

• intending intention
• imagining imagining
• remembering remembering
• attending to attending to

as examples. The idea is to get people's intelligent attention taking in something that's always been going on in them in all manner of ways, for some time, as the experience of being alive, active and sentient. We're turning the light on underpinnings.

In the workshop, we will do attentional:intentional exercises using the four co-efficients of competency in variously structured sequences and entertain conversation with the workshop attendees. The exercises will have effects, so it's likely someone will have something to say.

These exercises and the awakening that they enliven serve as a gateway, not merely for evaluating the world in a mental-analytical, conceptual way; but for coming up-to-speed and on-line in a well balanced, more-integrated way -- to change the underpinnings of the spontaneous impulses we call, behavior, seen as movement, felt as cognition.

The Gold Key Release applies this insight to handle Sensory-Motor Amnesia at the level of mind and consciousness (Attentional-Intentional Amnesia).

The Psycho-Active TetraSeed Transformations | Sharpening Intelligence

 

The Gold Key Release
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CONTACT:

copyright 2017 Lawrence Gold

Four Qualities That Set the Destiny of Every Relationship

It may come as a surprise to you that there are four qualities that set the destiny of every relationship -- and only four, but by the time you have finished reading, you will recognize them in yourself and understand why past relationships have gone as they did and why present relationships are going as they are.

Those four qualities are:

1. sincerity
2. availability
3. interest
4. cooperativeness

I'm going to explain each of them, show how they work, together, and how they apply to relationships.

First, the explanations of each.

THE FOUR QUALITIES

Let's start with sincerity.

Sincerity

Sincerity is being true to your word and true to yourself. That means, not only keeping your word, but only giving your word if you feel right with yourself, doing so.

I understand that there are situations where you feel compelled to give your word, on something.

If you feel compelled, you can't be sincere about it.

Sincerity is not, "being really persuasive", or being really emotional about something.

Sincerity is a condition of alignment between thoughts, feelings, and actions -- without internal conflict, misgivings, or second-guessing. It's being true to yourself.

"To thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
~~ Shakespeare

Availability

Availability is being present -- not just in some psychological sense, but also physically present. It's being present to being seen, heard, and felt.

Again, I understand that there are situations where you feel compelled to make yourself available.

If you feel compelled to make yourself available, you're not whole-hearted about it -- and if you're not whole-hearted about it, you're not really available.

Being available is not merely being available in some nominal way, like, "Call me, any time."

Being available is an emotional and physical state. It's being capable of listening and being honest. Lying and deception are forms of unavailability. So are breaking ones word -- our first hint at how these qualities work, together.

"Wake up. Clean up. Grow up. Show up."
~~ Ken Wilber

Interest

Interest is attraction to a situation, person, subject, or thing. 

Interest may be feigned, but you know the difference. If it takes effort to "stay interested", you're not really interested.

Again, I understand that there are times when you are not really interested in something, but you force yourself to stay with it. Sometimes, necessity is a factor. Just don't confuse that with interest.

Being interested is a form of, "eros" -- being strangely attracted to something. It's unreasonable. If you're interested for "a reason", there's a should, in there, somewhere, rather than that you simply are interested.

Sometimes, you feel wrong being interested in something or someone. That's too bad, for you -- not because you're interested, but because you feel wrong, about it. Anyway, you're not really in a quandary. If you take into account all four of the qualities, in yourself and in the other, you can be pretty clear about the situation.

Sometimes, you need to dig a little deeper to sift out the should from the "I am."

At the end of this piece, I provide a power-tool for that kind of excavation -- a very powerful power tool.

"Are you interested?"

Cooperativeness

Cooperativeness is "co-" ("with"), "operativeness" ("doing-ness"). If you're doing something with someone, you two are cooperating. If you're on a date, with someone, you're cooperating, at least as far as having gotten together.

If, on the other hand, one of you is not really interested, not really available, or not really sincere -- it's a bad date or, "date over" -- or "marriage over".

Again, I understand that, at times, you have to cooperate under those conditions. Maybe your boss (or partner) has asked you to do something you're not really into, at that moment. You may go through the motions, out of necessity. Just don't confuse that with cooperativeness. It isn't that; it's, "compliance". "Thank you for your cooperation," is something generally said when you did something you didn't really want to do.

Cooperation is whole-hearted; otherwise, conflicting motivations creep in and spoil the experience.

Which kind of cooperation would you want in a relationship?

"Ya gotta wanna."

How They Work Together

By now, you've already started to see that, but I want to be thorough and show you how, for a relationship of any kind to be successful, all four need to be on-line and working synergistically. The word for that is, "integrity" or "authenticity".

I'm going to present pairs of these four, all of them. You may take a moment with each pair and experience, "the light going on", as you suddenly feel them unite (integrate).

There are six '"aligned" pairings:

1. sincerely available
2. sincerely interested
3. sincerely cooperative
4. interested availability
5. interested in cooperating
6. available to cooperate

... and of course, the "truth standards"

• sincerely sincere
• interestedly interested
• cooperatively cooperative
• available to being available

Any resistance to these pairings reveals "where you're at" in relationships. It reveals your character, to yourself.

The Standard of Clarity: Non-Alignment in Relationship

Just to make sure you understand, at the level of feeling, I'm going to contrast each of the pairings with its opposite. (I did this with a couple of examples, earlier.)

1. insincerely available (DISHONESTY) -- or --
   sincerely unavailable (HONESTY) -- or --
   insincerely unavailable (AVOIDANCE)
2. insincerely interested  (DISHONESTY) -- or --
   sincerely uninterested (HONESTY) -- or --
   insincerely uninterested  (HIDING FEELINGS)
3. insincerely cooperative  (SABOTAGE) -- or --
   sincerely uncooperative (ANTAGONISM) -- or --
   insincerely uncooperative (SELF-SABOTAGE)
4. interested but unavailable (PRIOR COMMITMENT) -- or --
   uninterested but available (NONCOMMITAL MEDIOCRITY) -- or --
   uninterested unavailability (DISDAIN)
5. interested but uncooperative (RESERVE) -- or --
   uninterested cooperation (OBLIGATION) -- or --
   uninterested uncooperativeness (NEGLECT)
6. unavailable to cooperate (AVOIDANCE/HIDING) -- or --
   available but uncooperative (CONTRARINESS) -- or --
   unavailable and uncooperative (HONEST REFUSAL)

... and of course, the "standards of deception"

• insincerely sincere
• uninterestedly interested
• uncooperatively cooperative
• unavailable for being available

Applying All This to Relationships You've Been In

We meet in relationship in many areas and ways: work, love, sex, business. You can apply the pairings of the four qualities to any area of life and to any incident or situation.

Casual Relationships

A mix of the various aligned and unaligned combinations produces casual or superficial relationships. Consider Facebook "friends". Consider co-workers and people you encounter in business.

Consider any casual relationship. Look at it in terms of the pairings. Look at them in yourself and in the other. Look at words and look at actions; look at whether the actions are consistent with the words. Look at the activities you share. Revealing.

Close Relationships

Closeness occurs when all of the four qualities are active and integrated (all pairings are present). To the degree that the four qualities are present in their aligned form (first set of six), to that degree, we have closeness and it feels like closeness.

However, when we are close in one area (as in, say, having gone through a growth experience, a disaster or a big success, together), we may or may not actually be close in many areas. If feel close in one area, we may expect that closeness to apply to all areas of life, but what has developed is an untested, superficial trust factor that only potentially leads to deep friendship or intimacy.

Such relationships are "relatively" close and are only "relatively" revealing -- revealing of misalignments-in-relationship. The areas of misalignment are the sense of distance between individuals.

Intimate Relationships and Soulmates

Intimates and soulmates share alignment, not just in many areas, but in fundamental areas, in deep areas of self. We have an integrity that has stood the test of many circumstances.

Intimacy especially reveals our misalignments. The difference between "relative" closeness and intimacy is the willingness to grow and change under the influence of the other person -- and the willingness (and ability) to change, where misalignments exist.

One-Sidedness

Sometimes, the pairings of the four, in ourselves, and in others mismatch in different aspects of our lives, so that it seems that we feel differently about the relationship than they do.

When that happens, check for a mismatch between words and actions -- both in our self and in the other. There's a break.

Overriding and Imbalances

Sometimes, we override our feelings; sometimes, we are in denial.

The overriding of feelings and denial lead to imbalances that may occur in any area of life -- a break of integrity that can lead to a breakup.

What to Do, If . . . 

Let's say you're invested in a relationship, and it's stuck. What can you do?

You've already started the first step: Wake up.

Wake up,  in this case, means bring all of the pairings to the light of day -- that means, in yourself and in your perception of the other person. You can remember the ways in which things are stuck or broken.

The next step is, clean-up.

Ordinarily, the most people can do is "try". They may use affirmations, well-meaning efforts, communication, therapy, visualizations, etc.

From personal experience, you know these approaches are only "relatively" effective.

Allow me to offer a more powerful alternative:  The Gold Key Release.

The Gold Key Release is a way to deprogram yourself from forever-limitations that keep you stuck. It's an internal process that uses ATTENTION, INTENTION, MEMORY, AND IMAGINATION in a single, unified process. Many stuck places can be freed in fifteen to twenty minutes. Others, especially deeply entrenched conditioning, take more -- but there are ways to deal even with those. The result is more spontaneous right action, more free creativity, in the area addressed. Things go better.

Rather than explain The Gold Key Release and all of its steps, here, I'm offering you all of it on this page. My advice: follow the instructions closely, and start with something juicy -- an incident or something that bothers you. Moderately difficult situations are easiest to put through The Gold Key Release because you already feel them, distinctly, while they are not so "crusty" that you need a large number of passes through the Release to get them to dissolve. That way, you get a successful experience, early on, and can recognize the value of The Gold Key Release for many areas of your life.

Click the key, read, and get started. Ya gotta wanna. It's your life.

Wake up. Clean up. Grow up. Show up.

Are you interested?

Humanoid Self-Gratification Laid Naked: The Morlocks and the Eloi

A Window into a View of Life
The Gold Key Release, to Free Yourself from Forever Limitation
This entry may stir things up, in you. To settle those feelings after you've read it and "seen the writing on the wall", use The Gold Key Release. You'll feel better. Click the image, below, and do The Gold Key Release on the "stirred up" feelings, as instructed on the page at which you land.

Click the image.

The Gold Key Release:
to Release You from Forever-Limitation

into the Space of Open Possibility

As a possibility . . . 
it's available in many ways . . .
as an actuality, it requires intelligence and sanity to enjoy it safely:

Self-Gratification

The intention of this writing is to appeal to your imagination
to attract your attention and get you to remember things.

Having done that -- and I mean this to be very important -- to dissolve the substance of it all by means I have provided at the end -- a lifesaver.

Persons and things consist of both form and substance. "Substance" makes "form" substantial.

People confuse "the form" with "the substance."
They may think that it's enough to have "substance" without being equally discerning about the "form" of the substance. People are not that discriminating.

In fact, the word, "discrimination", as been given a bad name -- even though it only means, "discernment". What has been popularized as the meaning of "discrimination" (by the official sources of information) is not true discrimination, but stereotypical discrimination, broad discrimination without attention to details. It is the word, "discrimination", indiscriminately used.

Without discrimination, people are unable to tell what is good for them from what is bad for them. They take too much of "the bad" along with, "the good".

That is the basis of materialism, that is, Consumerism
an attempted solution to the distresses of life.


If that escapes you, listen to this:

Two behaviors that involve self-gratification are the affliction of the world:

immature self-gratification

and

insane self-gratification

These are not the only two behaviors there are, but they are the two major afflictions of the socio-economic world.

IMMATURE SELF-GRATIFICATION

abandons sensibility (intelligence) -- or never had it

Immature Self-Gratification wants things before it has created them or earned them.  It wants more before it feels it has earned it -- but it rationalizes that it deserves it. It wants it, now.  It confuses imagining something in a vague sort of way with imagining it with such completeness and integrity that it can be of value others. It wants the "owning" but hasn't the capacity to sustain having what it wants because it hasn't developed, enough. It hasn't borne its fruit, but it wants the fruit brought forth by others -- already.  It's a Consumer.  Infantile and childish behavior doesn't know it's infantile or childish.

Nonetheless, it wants its gratification  -- and those who aspire to Insane Self-Gratification will give it.

INSANE SELF-GRATIFICATION
abandons conscience (integrity) for self-gratification -- or never had it

Insane Self-Gratification gets gratification from choosing The Unwholesome.

It accepts displeasure as part of its pleasure.

It chooses the things of its own pleasure and takes the pleasure despite the displeasure it afflicts -- and then tries to control the displeasure that comes with it, like taking a drug to counter the side-effects of other drugs.

Knowingly choosing what is unwholesome is the definition of, evil. It's also kind-of stupid.

It is the basis of Consumerism as a paradigm of marketing -- programming people to want things they don't already want, beyond what is beneficial, programming people to acquire meager (even if expensive), temporary (even if modestly fulfilling), or questionable (even if popular) pleasures in exchange for long-term displeasure -- the displeasure of being in debt beyond their means, of owing and not being able to pay, or of the let-down of the thing acquired not fulfilling the dream portrayed in the marketing -- portrayed to lastingly exceed the long-term displeasure of debt -- acquisitions depicted to make the displeasure worth it -- the tacit rationale for war, crime, and predation of all kinds.

One of the attitudes it holds is, " Businesses should be protected from interference simply because they are profit centers" -- a very simple-minded attitude. Don't you agree? 

Insane Self-Gratification is the arrested development or magnification of immature behaviors --  the desire to suckle at the breast more and more, and forever -- Immature Self-Gratification "gone 'Godzilla at Tokyo', 'Dracula in London". Insane Self-Gratification is as Thirsty as Dracula and as Big as Godzilla -- bigger, if the truth be told. It's appetite is more ravenous -- and it can't distinguish between good and evil -- the Legal Insanity Defense -- or simply won't -- the definition of guilty. However, like Immature Self-Gratification, it has a rationalization: because "business" is involved, It deserves it. It rationalizes because it secretly feels otherwise.

Insane Self-Gratification preys upon Immature Self-Gratification. It feeds off of unnecessary Consumerism in its own Super Consumerism. It's "The Consumer of Consumers -- The BIG Consumer" and Immature Self-Gratification is the source of its food. 

Immature Self-Gratification is The Way of life of The Eloi. ("the 99.9%")

Insane Self-Gratification is The Way of Life of The Morlocks. ("the .1%")

in H.G. Welles', The Time Machine

The Metaphor of The Time Machine

H.G. Welles' story, The Time Machine, was set in a future, post-war Earth.

In an early scene, we see the time-traveler in his time machine whirling into the future. The time machine comes to rest in a dark cavern. In moments, humanoid creatures discover the time-traveler and his machine in the cavern. In moments, they attack him. They are hairy, aggressive creatures with large teeth and eyes that glow in the dark. These are the Morlocks. The Morlocks are flesh-eaters -- mutants -- the ones who provide the sustenance of the Eloi. The time-traveler manages to fight them off and escapes in the time machine to a days-later time, still in the cavern.

After his first encounter with the Morlocks, we see the time traveler emerge from the cavern into an idyllic, garden-like setting. Soon, he comes upon The Eloi, a peaceful, aesthetically-refined people reminiscent of the Flower Children of the 60s. The Eloi live lives of leisure and gentle entertainments with their needs provided, mysteriously, on an ongoing basis. They are vegetarians.

In a later scene, we hear what we recognize as air-raid sirens. The Eloi stop their feasting, look up, and then file peacefully into the great mouths of underground shelters with heavy sliding doors that close behind them with a boom. After a time the doors slide open and the Eloi emerge -- but not all of them.  The flesh the Morlocks eat is that of the Eloi who come to the caverns when the sirens sound. They "farm" the Eloi. The sirens are theirs.

The Eloi correspond to those who live lives of Immature Self-Gratification. The Morlocks correspond to those who live lives of Insane Self-Gratification. As the Morlocks feed upon the Eloi, Insane Self-Gratification feeds upon Immature Self-Gratification.

That is the metaphor of the story, The Time Machine, as it applies to today.

What happens to the vampire's host after the orgasm of Blood Feast?

When Civilizations Fall

A Civilization dies, falls, or collapses either because of environmental calamity or, more commonly, because of Immature Self-Gratification wanting more than it earns and because Insane Self-Gratification doesn't care, as long as it can feed on Immature Self-Gratification. Insane Self-Gratification has the system rigged to maintain Immature Self-Gratification as its food source.

But for either, it's not enough.

MORE, MORE

Both want, "MORE" -- one of them, with good reason:

The Eloi are dependent upon the Morlocks, who give enough to sustain them but who keep their power over The Eloi hidden and unrecognized. The Eloi really do need, "more", for their own survival against the predation of the Morlocks -- more information about their situation and control over their own survival. Their dependency is their weakness. They remain oblivious.

The Morlocks are dependent upon the dependency of the Eloi for their sustenance and keep their power over the Eloi by hiding in the caverns, unseen and so unrecognized by the Eloi -- while they provide enough for the Eloi to survive as a food source. They want more Eloi -- for breakfast. They want to maintain control.

The two have the mood of, "MORE", in common.  It's just that one is predator and the other is prey.

The System of, "More"

In Consumerism, the Consumer is Consumed by credit-debt, the money from interest going to those who own the System.

In Consumerism, those who control the wealth skim wealth from the flow of money from the productivity of the producer in virtually all of its channels, while producing nothing but rationalizations. They are involved with getting the Consumer to consume more and different things, unnecessarily or excessively, to exercise power toward the accumulation of wealth, and through wealth, control, for Insane Self-Gratification. That's Never Enough.

The Displeasure of Never Enough triggers the idea in them that "More Would Be Enough" -- and on they go, choosing the pleasures of their undeserving life, oblivious or inured or desensitized or perversely cherishing the displeasures of their actions that make all they have, always, "Not Enough".

It's been said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

I think that's stupidity. It never learns.

I think that insanity is "going for what is, and feels, unwholesome" as if it were wholesome.

That leaves the psychopaths, who override the feelings of people for the sake of their "one-channel mind" results. They, also, choose self-gratification. But just as they don't feel the feelings of other people, they also don't feel their own feelings. Those feelings are overridden by the tenacity of the logic in them, that They Are Doing Things Right. They are selectively perceptive, one-channel (wealth-and-power-and-material-pleasures) minds incapable of or unwilling to take in more criteria than, "Money Excuses Everything". A one channel-mind is another version of, underdeveloped -- a "one-trick pony" mind.

It's not that "money excuses" (although it's well known that the wealthy and powerful get away with murder), but that people excuse them, abandoning their intelligence and integrity for the hope of themselves (Immature Self-Gratification) becoming like the wealthy and powerful (Insane Self-Gratification).

What a stupid game -- both are forms of Humanoid Self-Gratification

How about this:

Immature Self-Gratification: Educate yourself. Mature into becoming more fully human. Develop your interests into abilities. Produce what is valued so that people will be glad to give to you. Get your self-esteem from living up to your own potential, not from others' social or political approval (which isn't self-esteem, but "other esteem" -- which doesn't really suffice, anyway). Exercise truthfulness to self, patience, persistence and creativity. Exercise creativity that embodies and advances well-being. AWAKEN AND DEVELOP YOUR INTENDING, IMAGINING, ATTENDING AND REMEMBERING faculties of intelligence. Get your intelligences on-line and connected.

Earn what you get within your capacity to maintain it. "By not advancing himself, he stays ahead of himself." (Lao Tsuh)

Overcome the indoctrination of Insane Self-Gratification. Deprogram yourself. Exercise your intelligence.

Insane Self-Gratification: You've seen that wealth, power, and consumerism are Never Enough, yet you haven't learned the lesson. In that, you're the personification of stupid -- never learns -- and insane -- going for what is unwholesome. You're smart in a one-channel-mind sort of way, but you create more detriment than you do, benefit, by preying upon Immature Self-Gratification instead of nurturing it because, "being in business, you deserve it," a slick rationalization if I ever heard one -- a rationalization  you have sold to Immature Self-Gratification to excuse directing the fount of wealth in your direction, while allowing a trickle to trickle down.

You think this is a "top-down control" culture, but fail to recognize that the foundation of your wealth are those on whom you prey -- and that their well-being funds your own. Wealth accumulates proportionally to its general circulation. When wealth accumulates in pools and doesn't circulate, stagnation ensues. It's "socio-economic diabetes".

Get your "Enough" from the "Enough" of others who had, "Not Enough". Partake in their relief and well-being, duly earned.

Overcome the indoctrination of "More Will be Enough". Wake up and redirect your lives.

~~~~~~~~~~

But understand -- psychopaths are emotionally underdeveloped and/or emotionally dissociated (albeit cleverly manipulative and intellect-dominant) humanoids with one-channel minds some of whose "incoming information" channels (e.g., moral intelligence, empathy, and sense of integrity) are unawakened or clogged with dysfunctional programming from who-knows-where, and so, distorted and so, only humanoid. There's something humanoid about their brain functioning. Their, "Never Enough" conditioning sucks hard on the "wealth and power" channel, and may suck it with enthusiasm to the point of killing the host -- and harming themselves, in the process -- but that may not seem to matter, to them, because their moral intelligence is limited. Dinosaurs.

There is a way to bring on-line and balance the intelligences -- but you've got to want to. You've got to see bringing your intelligences on-line as an advantage.

"At no time in the world will a man who is sane overreach himself, overspend himself, overrate himself." (Lao Tsuh)

Click the image.

The Gold Key Release: 
to Release You from Forever-Limitation

into the Space of Open Possibility