 Most of us have known for years that activity can bring us out of shock. However, fine tuning this knowledge with regard to which activity is best for us is new. This Emergence conversation discusses how to make this choice, along with how one's levels of consciousness effect one's levels of energy. Sunday, June 19thHi Steve, I just got myself off the couch (I need to pack this weekend!!) by starting to wash some dishes. This made me think about your suggestion to start an 'organizing activity' when I'm stuck. (Of course, it would have been nice if it would have happened in the reverse order. But this is how it actually happened :-) So I thought about raising consciousness - do you think an "organizing activity" is one way to do it? I used to think that organizing was thoughtless / mindless style work that didn't take much emotional involvement, and that I enjoyed it because I didn't have to put too much energy into it. (That doesn't sound quite right - it's a certain kind of energy???) But my experience today is more that just by actually "getting going" and getting something accomplished, the whole energy around what I need to do has changed. More over, this seems connected to what we spoke about yesterday, but I'm not yet clear how! What do you think? Annie that day, I wrote back and said ...Dear Annie, Interesting observation. And one I've done much work on. No coincidence, during my searches to understand Asperger's (and how we come to learn to learn), I've discovered what I see as quite a few things clearly related to your observations. To answer your question though, yes, I do believe doing an "organizing activity" is one way to raise one's consciousness. I also see the more accurate way to describe what is going on here is that by doing an organizing activity, you are "coming out of shock. So is doing an "organizing activity" the best way for a person to come out of shock? In truth, I think we all have a "personal best" way to come out of shock, a best general category of activity which we can use to raise our levels of consciousness. More over, I've been able to discern four basic classes of "coming out of shock" activities, each based on one of the four developmental learning stages we all go through between birth and about age four. As you've heard me talk about, I see these four stages as being, "comfort," "neatness," "understanding," and "freedom." Or we could see these four things as the activities themselves; "sensing," "organizing," "learning," and "individuating." Please know, I see these four activities as more being the focus of the four "leaning to learn" stages we go through than any required developmental achievements. Nor do I see any one of these as the overall best focus. They are simply the four essential ways we focus on life. My point for saying all this is to say that we all have what I call, a set of "Social Priorities," a personal preference for what we focus on in life. More over, this focus changes based on our current state of consciousness. More over, knowing how this focus changes in us based on our levels of personal consciousness gives us the ability to better understand and manage our lives, including being able to better manage being in shock and one's levels of consciousness in general. So how can you know which activity is best for you to use to come out of shock? You can determine which is best by taking one or two of the Social Priority tests I've posted on my site. My "coming out of shock" preference is "organizing. In fact, it 's exactly the same experience as the one you describe in your email. Know, however, that only one in four people will have this preference. You and I seem to be in this 25%. More specifically, my social priorities are 3-4-2-1. In other words, I am an "understanding, freedom, neatness, then comfort" person or a "learning, individuating, organizing, sensing" person. This means when I'm in my normally state of consciousness, my preference is to be able to learn about whatever I what to learn about. And my coming out of shock preference will be to emerge from the need for comfort (e.g. by overeating) by focusing on my need to organize something simple; a basic, daily, organizing need. In this category, what works well for me is to do the things on my daily chore list which I've been putting off the most. So, doing things like making the phone calls I've been putting off or answering the emails I've had on hold work well for me. Noteworthy is the fact that I feel the most pleasure, and personal gain, from doing these kinds of small chores when I begin to do them while I'm in a lot of shock. In these cases, I can usually feel better, and begin to come out of shock, within minutes after I begin the first chore. I also see this "feeling better" as being an indicator of my consciousness "momentum"; meaning, the direction my current level of consciousness in presently taking. For me then (and as I am a 3-4-2-1), overeating indicates my momentum is heading down toward the bottom of my range of consciousness, while doing chores which better organize my daily living indicates I am beginning to turn this downward momentum around, and that I am beginning to rise up out of this bottom. Finally, when I sense I am beginning to feel free of the burden of unconsciousness, I know I have risen to the "freedom" level of consciousness, which for me is the precursor to being at the level of consciousness wherein I function best, my top social priority; "learning." Lately, with my having to very much face my father's failing health, I have spent much time in my bottom level of consciousness; "comfort." No coincidence, I am currently in the highest weight range I've ever been in. For me, overeating is the in-shock "comfort" I most often choose. Interestingly enough, despite my having been in this shock, I have not lost the gains I have made during the past few years in and around eating and weight. By this, I mean I can still access my ability to not blame myself for my being over weight, easily and without effort. I simply do not hate myself for my being over weight. I simply feel worried about my health and about my stuckness in what for me is my lowest state of consciousness. To wit, I can still get on the scale in the morning and not have an anxiety attack about getting on nor when I see the number of my current weight. In fact, I even feel gently drawn to know this number, not as some self worth rating (as it once was) but rather just because I now feel very much in love with being the guardian of my health. In addition to all this stuff about how activity relates to one's levels of consciousness, I also see your comment about feeling more energy as being directly related as well. In fact, I see your more energy experience as being directly related to the direction your state of consciousness is currently taking, with feeling a downward shift indicating you are experiencing an "energy drain", and feeling an upward shift indicating you are experiencing an "energy gain." So how do these "gains" and "drains" directly relate to health? On this question, I am still confused. What I do think so far is, we somehow need to go into shock in order to be healthy. What I mean is, I believe we need to go into shock in order to experience an energy gain. Thus, when people go to the gym and workout, they definitely put themselves into shock. Then, when they feel more energy afterwards, I think they are more feeling the rising momentum of their consciousness changing than any static measure of health. What I still don't have is a good "getting unstuck" tool; meaning, I have yet to find an easily accessible tool we normal folks can use in order to turn a falling momentum around. In this, it seems the laws of "entropy" are at work each and every moment we are alive. OK. So because of the negative consequences of a falling momentum, we each have quite a motive to counteract this entropy. Ironically though, being in shock prevents us from accessing this motive. This makes being able to manage our levels of consciousness, or more specifically, being able to readily come out of shock seem to be the crux of the whole health thing. I also know that being connected to another being is the key to coming out of shock. Even so, knowing this still is not enough, in that no one can or should try to stay connected to another 24/7. It's just not do-able. Or spiritually healthy. My best guess as of today is, balancing all these things would be the key to it all. Maintaining a balance between being conscious and being in shock. Maintaining a balance between being connected and being alone. And maintaining a balance between needing will power to come out of shock and being carried along on the shoulders of the momentum of a rising level of consciousness. Wouldn't you think that knowing all this would make it easy <grin>? It doesn't though. I guess I've still got heck of a ways to go before enlightenment, wouldn't you say <grin>. Hope you're having a great day. Steven  |
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