99 steps to reclaiming your individuality Step #39

Fearless discovery

If we were diligent in our exploration in the previous step, we should have indeed reawakened many long forgotten memories. Good, bad,happy, sad, whatever emotions they inspired, they all had one thing in common, we recorded them. We did this because we have the sensory capacity to do so. This sensory capacity has a common operating system in most of us. This primal encoded system helped us into awareness by establishing in that awareness basic responses that enabled us to begin the process of self-awareness.

Obviously we will not have had the capacity to regress to this point in our discovery. We are just not designed that way, More likely if we were earnestly diligent and dedicated we arrived back in various times during our childhood, during memorable times of learning lessons or having impressed on us social activities that caused in us dramatic points of emotional awakening, both pleasant and unpleasant. It was at these times, that the fabric of our existence was stretched. It was also at this time that those initial primal systems were disengaging from ourselves, and it was becoming incumbent on our-self to rationalize the activity. This was when we enlisted the help our our inner social circle (family) to establish norms and boundaries, and based on these we built our impressions and assertions.

If we were fortunate enough to regress to these times, then great accomplishments can be achieved, If not then where ever your retrograde journey landed will do just fine. Our main goal is to establish a base line. A point of reference we can use to add a set of pseudo boundary markers. When you can state with assurance that you held this belief, to this point in time, whether or not it actually was formed at that time, helps you to plot the natures progression up until the present. You now have a beginning and an end. Why is this important? Firstly it gives you the ability to stand outside of it and analyze it. Secondly it cements the status of the event definable in time, the notion of it operating anywhere but inside the realm of your control, has been extinguished. And when this occurs the ego's familiar litany of doubt, angst, or fear is diffused beforehand. All that is left now to do is assess whether this nature state's condition is acceptable to you, and if not, what needs correcting..

It really is that simple, but change will not occur overnight. discovery is only the beginning. The stages that follow will work on restoring you to full awareness, but you must be patient. Each step must be taken with the assurance that the fulfilled goal will be achieved, once we uncover the sum of it parts.

99 steps to reclaiming your individuality Step #38

Pathways to peace:

In our previous lesson, we were asked to begin the process of our awareness of what elements and interactions in our lives formed the majority of our character traits. We did this for two primary reasons. The first being an understanding of the causal forming of our natures, and secondly as an affirmation that it was indeed ourselves that formed the process, so there should be no doubt that we are capable of, understanding it, altering it if necessary, or transforming it into something far greater.

But before we continue we must be willing to lay aside our preconceived ideas of justification, association or accountability. But be certain we are in no-wise  attempting to grant ourselves grace from these attributes past or present, but are simply on a mission of discovery that does not include them as variables. And as you should be able to deduce by this proposition, we will be launching this discovery from within our neutral nature zone.

If we agreed to engage in an exercise regiment, we would be perfectly comfortable with knowing and accepting which positions we should place our bodies in to begin the exercise. With this same comfort and reasoning we should adopt the mental process of  acknowledging which nature state we should be in to engage in certain mental tasks. We will be in these states irregardless, just by the correlation they have been assigned by us, what we are doing here is making a conscious declaration, that we are indeed in this nature state, and from this declaration establishing our equally conscious authority.

One exercise we could engage in would be to take one common trait we have that defines us uniquely. Trace it back to its origin and assess its value to you. What commonalities does it share with other similar traits you have? How does it compare to similar traits you see in others.? What exactly defines it?  And finally what makes it either a positive trait or a negative trait, and why do you feel that way about it. Start off with any easily accomplished trait, and then progress to the more complex ones. Reemphasizing one again that this is discovery.

Once we can easily accept a challenge like this, we will slowly release the ego's throttling of our decision making process. And when we affirm boundaries to what activities are present in our defined realms of nature states, we will setup pathways unencumbered by doubt an uncertainty. These pathways will ensure quick resolves to our problems, assurance and confidence in our ability to overcome any challenge, and the comfort and security of knowing we have a place to retreat to grant us the peace required for reflection and resolution. Our own pathways to peace.    

99 steps to reclaiming your individuality Step #37

Retracing the manufacturing process:

Since we grew ourselves from a single cell, we should know how to be perfectly healthy, right? Although coined playfully, there is still a lot of truth in that statement. After-all it was both the foundational bedrock of psychoanalytical reasoning, and the catalyst that launched the modern era of psychiatry. At the point in time that we turned the page on readily receiving instruction, for some, a false sense of inherent accountability manifested and took its place. This is not to be confused with, maturity, responsibility, or the normal progression of accountability that is both expected and admired as we age. The false sense that we refer to here is, and is sadly often an errant falsity propagated in society, that age and age alone is somehow capable of advancing an individual socially and psychologically. This is simply not true and we owe the cementing of it in the construct of society primarily because; we are a society of rules and laws, and these can not be easily applied universally to the maturity of a group of individuals so the only other option was to apply it to the physical nature of the individual. We deviated there just to affirm the position, that age really has very little to do with maturity, and maturity has everything to do with recognizing and acquiring authority of the individual nature.

With the above being assented, does it not then seem logical to retrace our steps introspectively to understand just how we came to manufacture the self that we now consciously claim to be us? If we were to just simplistically retrace our experience backwards using a very banal criteria, and by banal we mean just to condition us into the exercise, and if so desired we could then willingly delve into it far more intricately. But for now let us just focus on three criteria (1) conscious decision making (2) personal accountability (3) self justification.

It is true of us all that at one point in our lives, we took that crucial leap off the side of the nest, and in an exhilarating free fall we experienced our first flight. What we hope to do in this exercise is to get as close consciously to that moment as possible or as memory permits. The purpose is not to delve into specifics, but to comfortably and nostalgically reminisce these experiences. Our first thoughts of independence, our first interactions with authoritative entities, absent of our parents. Some of our first crucial agreements either in school, sports or business. And finally friendships formed through joint ventures, or like interests. It is also true that these experiences would also have, on occasion, been cause for some of our first conflicts, so without slipping errantly into either justification or remorse, let us be vigilant observers and focus solely on reflection.

If we can be diligent and honest , we should at this time be willing to compare our motives then, and our motives now. How do they compare? Our interactions then, and now? Our conflict resolutions then and now? our sense of independence then and now. Now that we have established the base line, and the present,. we can now progress or regress in each way through each experience and find a wealth of experience as to how we became the individual we are, and also how we conditioned our behaviors. The key to success here is honesty. This is your own personal journey, you are the only person keeping tabs, and there is no score card. Take time to isolate a trait you are curious about,and then traverse that corridor of your mind. You will be amazed at what you discover. And then you will also concur "that since you formed your individuality, you can be certain of reclaiming it.        

99 steps to reclaiming your individuality Step #36

Accepting the rule of the gaps:

Early in our schooling we are taught basic principles of research and discovery.  We learn them through the sciences, and through academic disciplines. Cause and effect are understood through experiment, and as our learning progresses we are well cemented into the belief that every cause has its effect, and every effect can be traced back to its cause. This paramount truism of the material realm has its intrinsic dualist nature on this plain, but when it is brought into the realm of the psyche its path and pathos is not always so dualistic in nature.

We must keep this ever in mind when trying to exercise control over moods, emotions, or impulsive behaviors. For many have root causes buried deep within a matrix of learned behaviors. Even conscious awareness of their proximal origins, sometimes, is not enough for their natures to escape our grasp when trying to control them. This is true of everyone, so we should not stress over this to a great deal. What we need to do is establish perimeter warning alarms, so as to bring us to a point of neutrality before situations evade us and assume authority over us.

It is not so much that we have to become expert analysts of ourselves, though the more we earnestly apply ourselves this will become our natural state. What we have to learn to accept is, that on occasion we will be operating in relative unawareness, and outcomes, will, for the most part run smoothly. An example of this would be when one is driving a vehicle for a long distance. We can be preoccupied with thoughts and contemplations, but still be very conscious of the road in front of us, and be quite functionally in control of the vehicle. The same is true in our dealings with everyday life. We can be constructively analyzing situations, but still be in control of our surroundings. Our goal is not to become analytical automatons, but to accept the fruits of authoritative control of our nature states.

Over the course of time, and in countless disciplines and sciences, this principle of the gaps has been an accepted norm and necessity of the path to understanding. Just because we can't explicitly define it, does not prevent us from accepting its role in achieving our goals. The road to understanding our natures, our character makeup and our perceived individuality is dependent sometimes on just accepting our powerlessness in certain scenarios, in order to gain mastery over them. Accepting what you do not know, triggers the desire if sought to find the solution or answer. When we are in that state, the inquisitive state, we eagerly search out this knowledge, do we now see the importance of honoring the free movement between states..    

99 steps to reclaiming your individuality Step #35 

 

Theories and models:

Individuality to us is the goal, that is, if you are reading this with intent on change, not just out of curiosity. But like everything else in the universe, it is built on discoverable theory and structural model. Discoverable, in that it is a juxtaposed undertaking. One must first inquisitively desire to understand ones nature, and parallel in that it is both the will to understand and the knowledge of the understanding that culminate and catapult the individual into an enlightened state of being. This premise is nether new or unique to any one discipline, it is as a matter of fact, foundational in all throughout history. In order to unleash it in ourselves, we will need certain models to fashion our behaviors (natures) around in order to reap the conscious benefits of it.

This is nether complex or difficult, we need only understand that it is our willingness to undertake the challenge that is as integral to the exercise, as is the formulating of the action steps. The carrying out of those steps in our daily routines will culminate in our eventual overall success. For this we are encouraged to draw from any of the disciplines we have learned in our lives so far. Their particular origins, affiliations or doctrinal associations to us should not be of concern, for we are not trying to incorporate those ideologies into our project, we are simply utilizing their modeled framework as grounding points for us. The familiar is always the best ally when undertaking change.

We must grow from what we know. As previously asserted in preceding steps, our lives have been a sequence of conditioning exercises. Many of which are common throughout our peers. This in its simplest assertion, is one of the bedrocks of societal cohesion, our likes tend to draw us together, our differences  tend to keep us apart. You would find very few that would disagree with that assertion. The same can be said of our internal community of selves. The natures with which we feel comfortable with we willingly project externally as our public self, and the ones we don't quite fully comprehend, or the ones we lack confidence in or control over, we either hide or deny, or are at times victimized by in moments of out of control behavior. When we can earnestly grasp the truth that these are conditioned behaviors, then we can work at first by accepting, and then altering their stigma or detrimental effect on our natures as a whole. When we can shape these differences under the critical scope of analysis, not under the norms of an often grossly generalized external overview, but internally as getting to the roots of their origin. We can then rightly assert authority over them, and then achieving this they will integrate wholly into ourselves, and our public self, which is in essence the external manifestation of our individuality will be strengthened and empowered both publicly and integrally.

99 steps to reclaiming your individuality Step #34

Digestion and Reflection:

I would like to begin this step by asserting that the above title should not be interpreted as a directive to digest and then reflect, for in instances the opposite is equally advantageous. The awakened self will find that during the course of any life experience, there will be times when they will have to fully digest an idea or principle before they can reflect on its significance. And at other times they will need to reflect on the proposed idea, and then accept to digest it.  In either scenario the imperative is to never adopt the habit of accepting things unconditionally without the necessary discernment.

The irony here is that  facets of our quantum faculty to process information operates on the opposite principle of conscious choice. Our brains like nothing more than the autonomous integration of routines, skill sets and actions. This hypothetically could be the primordial ooze that spawned many of our inherent detrimental habits and characteristics.  The good news is, ours brains are equally as enthused to integrate or alter routines when the right stimulus is provided. Yet another reason for us to see the essential merit of maintaining authorship in our lives.

Our two points today "digestion and reflection" are resident in the neutral state. Aptly so, this is the area that to us, during the day we should become frequent visitors. As often mentioned, this is our safe zone, a place to revert to in times of duress, in times of uncertainty, and in times of reflection.. Early in the course we extolled the virtue and necessity of resting, digestion is similar in nature. In life to the awakened individual, you will often witness persons who suffer from a condition we can only humorously refer to as acquisitional obesity. People who ingest volumes of literature, ideas, habits and convictions, but they serve only to weigh them down or make them automated talking-heads. A digested idea is quite different. When we approach ideas or situations new or challenging to us we should get into the habit of consciously unpacking it. At first, again it will seem like adding nuisance or inefficiency to our daily routine, but as with preceding steps, what we are trying to achieve is a state of conscious autonomy. Our goal will be to autonomously program the act of digestion into our lives, that when we arrive at situations that require our acceptance or input. we will with immediacy jump to a reflective state of deconstructing the request, accessing it, utilizing a relational skill-set and then formulating our decisions or actions on the matter. When we become efficient at this task we will see a huge decrease in both anxiety and complexity of the decision making process. It is when we fail to do this and accept things haphazardly replacing reason with the luck of the draw, do we, in reality complicate our lives unnecessarily.

The notion of adding or expanding to our decision making skill sets will only feel burdensome as long as we feel ourselves subjugated or obligated to the nature which requires attention. When we approach it from an authored position, we will feel exactly the opposite, for we are adding efficiency to our lives, and the resultant swings in well being and quality of life will fill us with a sense of just reward, which in-turn will motivate and propel us forward.