None of Us Are Being 'Logical'

There is a concept that those who research how we think are calling the "Primacy of Affect" (The Master and His Emissary, Iain McGilchrist, 2009, pg.184).  Basically it says that one's feelings/way of being (affect) are not a reaction to one's cognitive assessment (logic), that actually it is reversed -- the affect comes first and our thoughts are a response to them.  The Abraham-Hicks materials defines logic as something we feel when we find information that fits with where we were already standing (what we were already feeling).

Now doesn't that explain a whole lot about what is going on and how some people seem to be so illogical to us?  It's because they are.  Many of us are running around being 'logical' about things we think are obvious and we don't understand how anyone could see it any other way.  We believe we are basing our logic on facts and truth and reality when really we are just trying to find things that agree with what we were already feeling.  Based on these two definitions, logic is not an objective truth, or fact outside of ourselves, it is a personal, subjective reflection of what we already feel and believe.

In LOP terms we could describe this by saying that we already have an essence or a feeling or an opinion or a habit in regards to everything that has ever happened in our lives, and it is from that essence that we then come to our next conclusions and next decisions.  McGilchrist writes that our "disposition towards the world comes first: any cognition is subsequent. . ."  So where we are on the upward or downward spiral in this moment, or in regards to any particular topic (disposition), dictates our thoughts and beliefs and what we deem as logical (cognition).  So, I think this just brings us back to the old question, "Do I want to be right or do I want to be happy?"  In LOP terms it would be, "How can I be right about being happy (who I really am)?"

It does not escape me that the writing of this post, and all the other posts on this blog, is a demonstration of this concept in action.  If I am to believe and practice the 'primacy of affect' concept then I must acknowledge that the reason that this premise seems logical to me is because it matches my disposition/how I feel.  And further, I understand that the researchers are just being logical about what fits with where they already stand as well.  So, once again, we have the opportunity to take a look at whether we are on the downward or upward spiral (because that is how we are going to experience things) by asking ourselves:

• Do I want to be logical about feeling awful, or do I want to be logical about feeling great? 
• Do I want to spend my time proving all the things I should be fearing, or do I want to use my time and energy to prove that there are a lot of things to appreciate in the world?  
• Do I want to justify why the things that frustrate me are wrong, or do I want to justify what is exciting or fun for me?  
• Do I want to put my energy into convincing others why what I like is justifiable or real for me, or do I just want to have a hoot pursuing the things that I enjoy?
• Do I want to be right about there being right and wrongs to discover and defend, or do I want to see how there are a variety of 'right things', and depending on what someone wants they will be seeing it that way, and their choices don't devalue mine.
  

If you decide 'the primacy of affect' is something that you like/feels logical, I am not saying you are doomed to the emotions of the past, because we are constantly moving up and down the spirals of life.  By practicing being who we really are, we work our way up the upward spiral and then our logic includes more and more of all the things that feel good -- our logic turns to justifying our fun and ease and creativity.

LOP is being aware of how I feel so that my choices of logic support my success and joy.

The Benefit, of the Benefit of the Doubt.

Giving the benefit of the doubt is not something we do for others.  Like forgiveness, it is something we do for ourselves; our own well-being.

I recently had a situation that required believing in a solution before I could see it.  Instead of getting caught up in worry, or blame, or freaking out, or resisting the circumstances, I decided to take a breath and not assume anything that was in the direction of the downward spiral (that just feels so awful).  I found myself being able to latch onto giving the benefit of the doubt.  I found myself bypassing blame, and trusting there would be a solution that was obvious once I had a chance to talk with everyone involved. 

The benefit, of the benefit of the doubt, is that from that perspective I will be able to see the next steps, choices, and decisions that will take me on the upward spiral.  I won't be able to see those solutions when I am worrying, or blaming . . . those reactions and choices are in the opposite direction of my solution.  If I would have freaked out I would have buried the possibilities I really wanted before they had a chance to present themselves.  I give the benefit of the doubt because I will be better able to see clearly, stay in alignment with who I really am (WIRA), with my priorities, and not take a journey on the downward spiral.

Our knee jerk reaction may be to blame and be angry but that's only because it has become a habit of protection (but protection is a mediocre way to live).  A habit of giving the benefit of the doubt can be a natural response as well . . . with practice.

LOP is giving the benefit of the doubt, because it's a gift we deserve to give ourselves.

Covid "What ifs . . ." In the Pursuit of Feeling a Little Better

I am hearing a new term out there -- covid fatigue.  Not surprising.  We have been very focused on trying to take care of our physical bodies, but it is easy to forget that our mental and emotional 'bodies' are going through this as well, and exhaustion with it all is an indicator of that.

This could be discouraging, but a cornerstone of LOP is that we all want to feel good and are constantly doing our best to move towards that, no matter how low down on the downward spiral we may be (i.e. being in blame feels better than fear).  So, this article will be my attempt to practice LOP with covid.

Maybe a good starting place would be to soothe our anger/fear about a pandemic.  I realize that may be a rather large leap, but I am going to refer to the Abraham-Hicks analogy that reminds us it is a good thing that we have sensitivity in our finger tips so we won't continue touching a hot stove and damaging our hands.  Feeling fatigue/anger/fear/grief is the perfect indicator/guidance that we want to stop doing whatever it is we are doing that is fatiguing us.  (Better said, we want to start doing what feels good.)  I would even propose that there is something underlying our covid reaction that was there long before the pandemic, and this change has just brought it to the surface, and that is a good thing too. 

Probably the more challenging step for each of us is clarifying what it is WE are doing/thinking/saying/believing that is not helping us to LOP, because contrary to what we are witnessing in our world, expecting/waiting for/trying to force others to be different so we can feel better, is not a very successful approach.   However, what is underlying for each one of us is too large of a topic for this article, but perhaps what is do-able within these paragraphs is to practice feeling just a little bit better so that we cease burning our fingers.  (If you are wanting to deliberately do some clarifying of what might be underlying for you individually I would refer you to the "Living On Purpose" book or journal, or the multitude of other resources out there on the topic.)  

So, from the premise we all want to feel better, here we go.  Again I am resorting to the Abraham-Hicks material, by playing the "What if . . ." game.

• What if it is perfectly O.K. and right to be feeling what we are feeling?
  
• What if it's a good thing we are fatigued and exhausted with all of this?
• What if we are supposed to be frustrated, angry and wanting things to be different?
• What if everything we are experiencing is perfectly natural and understandable and actually a sign of how healthy and well functioning we are?
• What if this was a good kick in the pants to stop pretending we are O.K. with a lot of things? 
• What if we were able to start giving ourselves more of a break about everything?
• What if what is happening is not really something going wrong?
• What if based on where we are at in the world this was the perfect time for us to consider some changes?
  
• What if this has started a plethora of questions that are beneficial in the process of beginning to look for some new answers?
• What if the pandemics that have gone before helped us to be a bit more ready for this one and this one will help us be a bit more ready for whatever is next?
• What if we saw humanity as like an infant, just beginning to learn how to walk, and we were able to feel more of the patience, understanding, and trust that a loving parent does for their immature, inexperienced, doing-the-best-the-know-how-to child?
• What if we decided to give ourselves a break from not doing everything perfectly and allowed the trial and error process, that all new things go through, a chance to evolve and unfold?
  
• What if we were able to see this as a time to step back, take a breath, and chill?
• What if we are able to find a few things, that we are now doing because of the pandemic, that we realize we prefer and will probably continue to do even when there is no more pandemic?
• What if we decided that some of the "busy", "bigger is better", "be more productive" things we were participating in were probably not really to our benefit?
• What if a couple of things have come to light that you realize are a priority and you probably would not have seen them without something significant changing?
• What if through this, we in our small groups and larger groups, see some areas where we know we can and want to be doing things differently?
• What if because of this those who were focusing on other work have turned there attention to things that will benefit us all in the long run?
• What if because of this some things that were holding us back/getting in our way have come to light and at least we are now aware of them?
• What if individually and as a whole what is really important to us becomes a bit more clear?
• What if because of this there are a few more people/groups that decide they want to work together and move forward into new possibilities?
• What if a child growing up in this time is inspired to who they really because of it?
• What if some of the things we were clinging to, that were habitual and not very beneficial to us, have become impractical or impossible during this time and we realize we are ready to let them go?
  
• What if we begin to recognize the old habit of wanting conditions to be different in order to feel better and we are able to take some of our power back?
• What if we finally get tired of the blame game and decide to give ourselves some relief by reaching for those things that feel better?
• What if those who are determined to put their fingers on the hot stove and endure it are allowed to do so and decide on their own when they are ready to make a different decision?
• What if we become a spec more trusting and appreciative of all our differences, preferences, and abilities and begin to see each other from new perspectives?
• What if somehow we could look in a crystal ball, years in the future, and easily see how so many of the things we are experiencing now became beneficial to our future?
• What if something so disruptive ends up becoming something we can appreciate because of what it did for us?
• What if because of this there is the potential for a bit more love and understanding between us?
• What if within all of this there are answers to questions we have been asking for a long time?
  
• What if within all of this who we really are is shining and becoming brighter.

 LOP is the pursuit of feeling a little bit better in our current moment so that we are becoming more of who we really are in our next moments.

"The Social Dilemma"

I was inspired to watch "The Social Dilemma" a couple weeks ago.  Couldn't explain why, just felt like there would be something in it that I would really like.  We don't have Netflix, so I subscribed and my husband and I sat down and watched it.  Then we watched it again.

For those who have seen it, I know it could be easy to walk away from it wanting to delete apps, shut off notifications on your devices, and resist the world of tech.  But the more I thought about it the more I was able to see, that in there own way, they were really talking about LOP.

They spoke about how our attention is a commodity and that every click we make on our devices, on any of the apps, is remembered and added to a profile of us as something that interests us.  How long we stay on any particular article, photo, video is also remembered and logged as something that is important to us.  They explained how important our attention is and that thousands of advertisers are wanting our attention and paying big money for our attention.  And perhaps most interestingly we are given more articles, advertisements, videos, etc. of exactly what we have told the app is of interest to us.  The more we get, the more we click and focus.  The more we focus the more it seems to be fact/the truth/real. 

What dawned on me is this is what is happening anyways.  Facebook and the other tech companies just wrote an algorithm as to what we naturally do in our lives.  Lou Tice coined the phrase decades ago "we move towards and act like that which we think about."  Einstein is quoted as saying "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer," which is a statement about attention and focus.  And in LOP I often refer to the upward and downward spiral of life, and how when we get on either of them there seems to be a momentum that takes us farther and farther in the direction of our attention.  

So, whether we are on Facebook or not, we still have an algorithm watching everything we choose, focus on, pay attention to.  Our minds are built to filter and sift through the extraordinary amounts of data we have bombarding us everyday and pick out the data we have deemed important through our attention.

I guess then the question becomes not what it true/right/proven (because our algorithms will support us in whatever we have given our attention to), but what am I clicking on?  Where am I spending the commodity of my attention?  Am I focused on what I want or what I don't want?  Am I focused on being right or being happy?  Am I focused on info that will prove my point so that I don't need to update what I believe, or am I focused on understanding a variety of viewpoints?  Am I focused on winning at all costs, or on all of us winning.  Am I focused on what to fear, or what I can appreciate?  Am I putting my attention towards resisting what is going on, or knowing that solutions are formulating?  Am I instructing the Facebook algorithm, or my own personal algorithm, to collect more information about what takes me on the downward spiral or the upward spiral?

I realize that it may seem easy, as 'The Social Dilemma' points out, to become addicted to what we have already been clicking on -- this is the natural momentum of focus.  We may find ourselves constantly checking our phones and apps seeing how many likes we have, responding to notifications that interrupt our focus, and seeing what the latest information is about someone we don't even know.  We begin to feel like Pavlov's dog and that doesn't feel good, and the reason it doesn't feel good is because it is usually giving us more of what isn't important to us/not in alignment with who we really are.  We have ended up feeling out of control in our lives, but we are the ones clicking on the things that are not in alignment with our priorities.

The good news, what I took away from the documentary, is we don't have to cut tech out of our lives, we are not victims of it, and we do not need to resist what we notice in our lives.  The good news is we can just be pickier about where we focus, what we click on, and where we are 'spending' this commodity that is our attention.  The good news is we are in the drivers seat, we are in control.  The good news is we are not destined to a life of being a commodity or of mediocrity.  We can change the pop-ups on our apps and we can change our perception about what pops up in our lives.  We can go from the downward spiral to the upward spiral by choosing what we click on.  The algorithms in our lives are bringing to us and showing us what we are choosing, and what a great way to get better and better at clarifying what is a priority to us and clicking on that instead.

LOP is about paying attention to what I am paying attention to so that those who are paying for my attention are serving me, what I really want, and who I really am.

Harmony Instead of Sameness

Harmony is the combination of simultaneously sounded musical notes (perspectives/ideas/lives) to produce chords and chord progressions (results) that have a pleasing effect. (Taken from the Oxford Dictionaries; parentheses are my additions.)

I believe it is harmony that we seek, however, we may be believing that it is sameness.  When we want everyone to understand, believe, and be the same as us, and they are not being that way, we want to make everyone else wrong and responsible.  If we choose harmony it becomes our individual responsibilities which can seem overwhelming and scary, however, finding the harmony is what is going to create the "pleasing effect".

I think we perhaps are lacking harmony in the world because we are not being the harmony, the beautiful notes, that is each one of us.  The good news is the lack of harmony in the world is helping us discover the harmony that is within us. We are in the midst of composing a great song.