DEFINING WORDS - THE LANGUAGE OF META-PROCESSING
& THE EXPERIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
& THE EXPERIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
[NewWord intro to be inserted here...]
• surrender v. submmission
Surrender is repeatedly described here as a spiritual path; as a process to enable relaxation and the spontaneous emergence of emotional 'stuff' for processing. Surrender is an act of will used to let go of will so that deeper internal (and perhaps) external experience can be accessed. The act of deliberately surrendering will may allow whatever is being blocked from experience by bias, pre-judgment, psychophysical programming, emotional stasis (repression and defense), or displacement into dissociated experience, to be allowed to effervesce into conscious awareness. Surrender is the very basis of all meditation and the teaching process of the yogas. Surrender is the vehicle of change in effective psychotherapy - whether one 'surrenders' to the truth of new realizations or merely 'surrenders' defenses that have been blocking self-awareness and psychophysical integration (change).
Submission specifically refers to placing oneself in a one-down position in relation to authority - leadership, patriarchal privilege, physical power, etc. Submission thus describes an act of losing one's self-empowerment, autonomy and authority.
Submission is a key word for feminist thinking - whether as psychology, political theory, philosophy, sexuality - i.e., responding passively to any form of oppression or hierarchy of authority and power.
Unfortunately, once attuned to 'submission' as a key indicator of gender inequality (and, often, male oppression of women), it is easy to misunderstand the notion of 'surrender' as wholly distinct from 'submission.'
In these writings, the construct of surrender is consistently referred to as a process of empowerment, a desirable spiritual orientation and a dynamic pathway that can be used to learn more about self and self-in-relation to the universe at large.
As regards gender and sexuality, the goal expressed here is for both men and women (and/or those in LGBTQ relationships) to surrender together in/to the 'Great Unknown,' the process of natural mergence and unification that necessarily takes us beyond all that we already know, believe and imagine that we understand.
The Zen irony of this pathway is that it requires an act of will, to 'lose' will and egoic mediation and to break into non-egoic levels of experience. One needs to orient one's will to surrender... and then let go of will altogether to experience whatever true surrender can reveal. The same paradox occurs when we 'try to relax.' It simply cannot be done!
• reflection
Reflection - Bouncing energy or words back to their source so that they can be perceived as incoming stimuli, with or without interpretive guidance, to elicit new associations or realizations. Reflections are always and inevitably altered in some way by the reflector. Think of the different color of reflections from polished brass and polished silver.
Literal reflection - The act of reflecting words back to the one who wrote them literally, word for word, so that an individual's words can be experienced as incoming stimuli. Sometimes things sound very different when we hear them (or read them) as incoming messages, and this often reveals new meaning that we did not realize was being expressed in our own words.
Personal reflections - Emotionally charged communication - feedback that arises when another individual reacts to something you have communicated, from within her/his own experiential perspective. Since personal transparency is extremely rare, it is a good idea to assume that everything that you feel from another's communication is a reflection of their own experiential content and your own: you can assume that there was something in what you ex-pressed that at least triggered the other's reaction-response. By assuming mutual responsibility for everything that occurs within your communication with any other individual, you can both use this totally subjective flow as a resource for individual growth and possible intimacy between you.
Pure reflections - Reflections that result when the human reflector has no emotional bias (or vested interest) that might color or account for her/his reflection (and interpretive guidance) to another individual. This is a very rare (or impossible) condition. And even if it does, occasionally occur, there is no way to know what another is experiencing. It is for this reason that you are better off looking at your own responses to what anyone says to you, and trusting that the 'truth' (or relevance) of what you are hearing can be understood within your own responses. It is important to understand that even if you hear something that is really 'right on' about you or your experience, if you are not ready, willing or able to let it in, then it is not 'truth' to you at that moment. Those (teachers, friends and lovers, etc.) who understand this allow whomever they are communicating to, to find their own meaning in response to anything that is said [see, Meaning].
• meaning
Meaning occurs when psychophysically (emotionally) charged experience produces emotional responses. Meaning can be assessed by psychophysical reactions; emotion must be understood within the experience of the individual. 'What you are feeling' and 'what it means to you' is always yours alone to know. Your actual experience is unique and cannot be predicted or wholly understood by any other person until you choose to communicate what you are feeling/experiencing. Sharing individual experience of meaning is always subject to distortions - in your sharing, in others' reception of what you have shared, and again in your interpretation of their response.
Meaning exists everywhere - everywhere and in everything that you encounter with your senses (perception), your mind, your body and your feeling. Meaning lives in past experiences, dreams, wishes, goals, interactions, relationships - in fact, anything that awakens feeling in you. One of the greatest sources of memory is culture. Cultural conditioning adds traditions of meaning and forms experience into ways of feeling and expressing meaning, mostly beneath our conscious awareness (see Culture). You cannot be emotionally free or well-integrated in all areas of being and consciousness until you 'break through' all the myths, games, programs and limitations of your cultural conditioning (and your cultural context of birth, life, education, religion, etc.). Some of what is meaningful to you is in your awareness... and the rest is yours to discover.
• epistemology
Epistemology literally means, 'what we can know and how we can know it.' This term is useful in self-exploration for two main reasons: 1) because one's epistemological perspective affects everything that we think we can know, and how we go about developing new perspectives; and 2) because there is no other, simpler, word that carries this meaning. The word, 'epistemological' is used as an adjective to describe an issue or a mindset or a question (etc.).
• culture
Culture evolves within social groups. It is greatly affected by local weather, geography and history. Culture is the primary vehicle for the transmission across generations of things you cannot see: values, beliefs, mythology and religion; ways of communicating (and not communicating); ways of expressing (anything you feel); how you regard your position in your social group and on the earth; your epistemology (see, Epistemology); your sexual preferences (bodily types, ethnic preferences, etc.); the language you use to communicate (which generally can only express what its culture admits or allows into experience). If you undertake the exercise of exploring every perception that floods through you to see how your cultural conditioning has affected that experience, you will inevitably find that there is no end to culture! Culture is the least understood of any of our major influences (and programmed limitations). This is because the area of intellectual study that deals with culture - cultural anthropology - does not generally study experience per se, and knows almost nothing about interactive, systemic psychology. Psychology, in turn, cannot comprehend what emotion is, and so anthropology finds itself collecting reports of what is important to others' experience and meaning without a firm basis in experiential psychology or experiential meaning.
• motivation
Motivation can be understood as the actual source of the emotional (psychophysical) energy that powers and activates an individual's words - their selection, ordering, emphasis, inflection, placement, strength, etc. Motivation is perhaps best studied by moving backward in time, from the written/spoken word to the speaker's experience just before the words came to mind. Meta-processing includes allowing this reverse temporal exploration to step backward indefinitely, following meaning (as detected by individuals' emotional response to themselves). Motivation can also be studied by projecting the written/spoken words forward in time, asking oneself what purpose they were expected to serve: 'where are you going with this stream?'
• infinity
Infinity - 'Two directions to infinity' - There are two, basic directions to the experience of infinity: you can move in, toward your center (wherever you experience that to be), or you can move outward from your center into space. By following either direction, as in meditation or any process of consciousness expansion, you might experience infinity. And when you do, you will discover that there is only one 'Infinity.'
Ultimately, how you get there does not really matter. Any path-way that takes you toward greater consciousness will get you 'Home.' Various teachers offer different practices, simply because they have learned (or developed) these according to what worked for them in their own growth [see, Teachers and Masters]. But once we all meet at the end of our self-imposed tunnels of separating experience, then we know that consciousness is a unified field that is everywhere and all the time. We can dip into it (or dive right in) in any way that suits our individual needs.
Moving inward occurs in many dimensions of experience, including: the action and experience of centripetal force (the force of attraction that causes moving objects - or consciousness - to be drawn in, as in a whirlpool); surrender (letting go); the bottom part of the exhale in the breath cycle, at the very bottom of the breath cycle, where there is no breath left, but the experience of exhaling feels infinitely possible; what is often called, 'the journey within;' centering oneself in meditation; being penetrated or subsumed (as in sex); exploring the microcosmic perspective (as regards anything); the experience of sinking into another person (as when a child sinks into its mother's belly); 'im-pression.'
Moving outward occurs in many dimensions of experience, including: the action and experience of centrifugal force (the force that pushes moving objects - or consciousness - away from the center-point beginning of their circular movement); projections (of will, defenses, attitudes, emotional expression); the top half of the in-breath (inspiration) and the first half of the out-breath (committing power and action); flowing outward in consciousness, feeling and subtle energy; penetrating or actively drawing in (as in sex); the macrocosmic perspective; the experience of reaching out to another person; ex-pression. And there are many other polarized dimensions of experience to be explored using this simple principle of polarity - which can lead to the eventual unification of experience into untiy or one-ness, as 'The All and Everything' (by any name or belief). [See also, Yin and Yang and 'The Tao'].• communication
Communication occurs whenever any energy, expression or consciousness emanating from one person interacts with that of any other person. Communication is only complete when it causes an effect in its experiential environment, in the way that a thrown pebble that misses a pond generates no ripples. Communication can happen on any dimension of experience - including touch, smell, visual expression, sound or Word (and in myriad other ways, of course). Communication can happen in silence, across vast distances and over great expanses of time. Inter-dimensional communication links us with all-time, all-place events. Quantum communication links particles and energy across time and space. There are three kinds of communication that are fairly easy to understand and experience directly: *** unfinished***
• ex-pression & im-pression
Expression - 'Pressing outwards.' Everything that flows outward from you: every movement, every breath, every word, every gesture, every thought, every emotion, whether your ex-pression is directed at another individual(s) or at the universe-at-large. Remember: everything expresses everything, and everything communicates.
Impression - 'Pressing inwards' or letting something in. All that comes into awareness (or experience), all that affects you - because everything in your experience affects everything in your experience. It is always difficult to feel (sense) what is impinging on your experience, to understand where it comes from, what it means and how to release any internal 'blocks' you might have. Once you are clear of these programmed obstacles, then almost anything can flow through you without ringing any bells or raising any flags of alarm.
• ignorance or 'ignore-ance'
Innocence, ignore-ance or disregard - Communication that passes through you without completion (without affecting you in any way). You may be blocking a particular message (or a particular individual's attempt at communicating) or you may simply be unable to process what is coming toward you for reasons which you are not likely to understand (until they no longer need to be there). Radio waves of a given frequency will only cause reaction on a receiver tuned to that 'station.' If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, then no one may have experienced the sound of it. It does not mean that it didn't happen But it does mean that its falling was not relevant to anyone... yet.
Because there is an infinite flow of information passing into, through and from you, 'ignorance' can simply refer to a state of ignoring this limitless resource - true ignore-ance. And as this limited state of awareness is exactly what our culture conditions us to accept as 'reality,' ignore-ance is usually innocent. But once you know...
• innocence
You can never be held 'responsible' for understanding what you do not know, do not feel or simply do not experience. A good motto: "Genuine innocence is its own protection." The power of Innocence is rarely understood, appreciate or (in social contexts) allowed. As you move toward ever greater states of surrender, you also begin to experience the openness that accompanies true innocence - once again.
• sharing
Sharing is a simple word, but has important implications. Let's define it here as all that you intend to communicate as well as all that emanates from you (in any form - sound, silence, energy, etc.) is being 'shared' by any who are sensitive enough to perceive it. When sharing becomes a two-way process (or expands beyond two persons) in which each person is perceiving something and responding (reacting) based upon whatever meaning they have inferred, this is the state of co-reflexive communication.
• mutuality
When sharing merges into a unified experience - when two or more people believe that they are experiencing 'the same thing,' this is the beginning of mutuality. Often, mutuality occurs even when each person is having very different experience - where the feeling that each is having is mutualized. Love is always a good example. We cannot know exactly what our lover is experiencing, but we can know when love is mutual. In another context, two people who have wholly different experience of a third person, may have a mutual experience or impression of trust or fear, without having exactly identical perceptions, thoughts, images (etc.). Experiential mutuality is often mistakenly seen as the goal of relationship or love, especially as regards gender - for those who believe that "every individual has both male and female 'sides' or aspects," and that each physical gender holds the potential for wholly realizing the gendered experience of the other. *** ADD ***
• archetypes
This is a word-construct that was popularized by the psychoanalyst, Carl Jung. If you use this word in conversation, people may thus ask you if you have read Jung - or offer you one of his books. However, the word construct of 'archetype' goes back to Greek culture, while the experience of archetypal being, consciousness and manifestation is timeless and universal. In meta-processing, we use the word to mean the energy or symbol or presence of basic, primal kinds of beings: the archetype of The Mother, The Father and The Child are perhaps the most obvious. But there are more - The Protector, The Nurturer, The Guide, The Teacher, The Student, The Lover, etc. These archetypes are not specific beings or people, but here we can use 'The' and capital letters to signify a being that is evoked or symbolized as an ideal or a most-wholly representative ideal.
As well, we can see archetypal essences in ways of being: honest, mortally afraid, risk-taking, thorough, loving, surrendered, etc. Every human 'carries' the potential for experiencing and manifesting many different archetypes. Some bleieve that we all hold every possible archetype of being and consciousness within each of us. Others see the universe inhabited by beings whose experience, conditioning (past experience), physical and mental selves - and particular patterns of feeling and awareness - are suited to being living archetypes of a range of possible archetypes that is experientially infinite. It is far more comfortable to live and be the archetypes that you are and can manifest, rather than pretending to be 'The All and Everything' for anyone, or for your self.
Experiencing archetypal consciousness in ourselves is difficult (usually what we can see is, or soon becomes, merely a pose). It is safer to say that the experience of archetypes is awakened when others experience them (and in us when others experience them in us). We all know archetypes from our past: mentors, (and maybe tormentors), those who have inspired us and those who have carried the cultural messages of limitation and denial and planted them deep inside us.
• whores, whoring & whoredom
It is of course usual to understand 'whoredom' as having to do with sex. Of course it can. But the real nature of 'being a whore' implies that you are offering something of your self to another person in exchange for something else that you want. In our culture, this usually implies sex for money. But there are many forms of 'trading' going on, between individuals and within each of us as we are led around by the rings through the nose of our illusions, vanities and fears. Some are whores for friendship and will do anything in order to be 'close' to a chosen individual - or perhaps to be accepted by anyone at all. Others are whores for acceptance, and will do anything for inclusion in a social group (or being accepted by an unloving parent). Others are whores for power and may trade integrity for position and rank, etc. So, to say, "I am a whore for security" may be a very constructive realization - one that has been the seed of change for many unsatisfying relationships.
• experiential homology
Homology refers to the study of populations which have derived from a common genetic base. Eperiential homology, then, would be the study of populations who have shared a common and shaping experience. Experientially homologous populations would include countries that have experienced a war, the generations that experienced the (last) Great Depression, etc. As well as pertaining to mass-affective experiences, experiential homology could also be applied to families, survivors of a school attack, or even a dyad whose emotional experience has evolved, over time, within the dyadic relationship. The construct could also be used as a sorting mechanism for demographics: the affective effects on experience of having red hair, being sexually non-orgasmic or having a particular occupation.
In applying this construct pragmatically in psychotherapy or psycho-educational processes, emotionally homologous experiences can be regarded as mutual (to whatever extent), in both positive and negative ways. Surviving a tornado together, for example, might provide a positive base in bonding and the reassessment of the importance of family members that often occurs in such situations. Conversely, the difference in ways family members may process a shared, terrifying experience (such as a house invasion, for example) may provide positive workpoints and process clues for other family members as they work through their trauma.
In the broader, cultural context, experiential homology may be assumed - but its effects upon individuals or individual families may well be far different than the over-arching cultural designation - as 'refugees,' or as 'unemployed.'
In this way, experiential homologies can be seen as providing constructive infrastructure upon which mutuality can be built. As well, experiential homologies can provide the basis for explorations of the different path-ways individuals (or families, or tribes) develop to move past the initial, homologous experience. In the latter instance, the initial, mutualizing event may provide a working base of empathy, from which the individual variances of effective, strategic processing can then be discovered and generalized to those affected by the initial event.
It may be found, then, that 'leaders' who emerge from shared crisis might tactically offer repeated ongoing emotionally charged links to the shared experience of the initially challenging event, and provide service to their people by connecting that terrible past to a brighter future. The obvious example of this is the political bonding with the public at large that is aimed for by certain politicians who constantly remind us of the insecurity and outrage Americans felt on 9/11/2001, and then link this to their function as leaders today.
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