 Hi Evelyn, Wow! Great exploring re: the ice cream and chocolate. You're amazing! Learning to understand shock can take some time, but you're close. It is usually much easier to understand if you keep in mind that, for the most part, going into shock means that you have a very limited ability to understand whatever you are currently sensing. In other words, being in shock is simply losing some degree of your ability to know what something means to you. For the purposes of learning what shock is then, for now, please just set aside any questions you may have other than those about the point I just made; that being in shock means you are currently having some degree of difficulty assigning meanings to what you are sensing. If you can focus on this point, you will have an easier time learning to recognize shock. Let me say this again. What I am asking you to do here is to temporarily set aside any questions you may have about the information you are currently sensing (both about how much information you are currently taking in and about the current mix of the mental and emotional information you are taking in). Now, at the risk of confusing you more, let me just say one thing about the information we sense: we constantly sense two kinds of information; mental information (which informs us about the physical world and our physical bodies) and emotional information (which informs us about the spiritual world and our spiritual bodies). Please note, even in shock, we are sensing this stuff. What we can not clearly sense while we are in shock is what this information means to us. Being in shock, then, is, for the most part, simply the experience of losing some degree of our ability to assign meanings to either or both of these two types of information. Further, the more shock we are in, the less meaning we can assign. (Conversely, the more conscious we are, more meaning we can assign to the information we sense, all the way up to being able to assign like meanings so universal in nature that afterwards, we will have almost no words to describe these meanings). Now a little more about shock and the two types of information, mental and emotional. Since there are two types of information we can assign meanings to, there are two basic types of shock; mental shock and emotional shock. In other words, one way we can be in shock is we can lose a significant degree of ability to assign meaning to the emotional information present and yet, still retain a good deal of ability to assign meaning to the mental information present (most peoples' normal state). This form of shock, the form I call emotional shock, is the most common. And the second way we can be in shock is we can lose a significant amount of ability to assign meaning to the mental information present (what kids call, a brain freeze) but at the same time, still retain a good degree of ability to assign meaning to the emotional information present (as in when people become hysterical or have emotional outbursts during a verbal bashing, etc.) This is mental shock. Said again, you can be in shock emotionally and be pretty conscious mentally (our normal state). Or you can be pretty conscious emotionally and pretty much in shock mentally. Then there is the third type of shock, which has to do with how much or how little meaning you can assign to the 'combination' of the two types of information you are taking in. This combination is what we usually call, the "nature" of what we sense. Further, we can assign meaning to this nature only when we can sense and assign meaning to both types of information in the same moment. Now for the real life stuff. When you are doing damage control, you are, for the most part, sensing and assigning meaning to the mental stuff fine. You are also intermittently losing this ability to understand the mental stuff and momentarily becoming able to sense the emotional stuff. During rough times, then, this back and forth thing is going on all the time. This means while you are sensing a lot of the information present, you are also sensing very little, if any, of the combination of the information present (the nature of the information, or the holistic meaning of the information). This nature holds the deeper meanings. So, being in shock during a fight means you are mostly missing the holistic meaning of the information, with some degree of missing the meaning of the emotional and or mental information present. Know that love is a holistic meaning. If you can not assign meaning to both types of information in the same moment, you will not have access to any love present. What happens then? Well, when you want to lash out, you are indeed feeling a lot of emotional information but the meaning is greatly obscured and so, the blaming meanings, which are the default meanings we use whenever we suffer, get assigned. This happens almost completely without choice, simply because we all have emergency programming built into us which runs in times when we lose our ability to choose. Damage control, then, is the little ability we do retain in these times, and what damage control is, really, is merely that we are exerting our will to control and override our urges to act on the blame we feel. We still feel blame. We just choose to contain it. If you put ice cream in your mouth, and if you really pay gentle attention to what you are sensing, you will probably realize that many things are going into shock. Your tongue for one. The cold is more than enough to put your tongue in shock. And the rest of the inside of your mouth too. And the amount of sweetness is pretty high too. Here again, the sweet taste buds can be out into shock from just one blast of sweetness if it is more than we can normally handle consciously. There is salt in ice cream. Have you been tasting it? Probably not. Eating ice cream causes shock almost every time we eat it. This shock prevents us from assigning meaning to the taste information we are taking it. Little wonder we over eat it. We are not aware that it is even going in most times. Now, after having said all this, try eating the ice cream and notice both the mental information (the tastes for one; sweet and salty, and the temperature for another). Now try to notice the emotional information present. Now try to sense both at the same time (i.e. what do I feel about this sweet stuff being in my mouth.) Finally, try to notice the meaning or lack of meaning (hint: "screw it" is damage control and shows the lack of meaning present: translation: you are in shock!). Anyway, I have to run. Can't believe I wrote so much! I'm so happy to be doing this together, Evelyn. Your presence is a great gift to me, really. Love, Steven  |
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