Tag: representation

Always Rising?

There is What Is (reality), always.

There is each of our interpretations of What Is, always.

Are they the same, always?

Do the representations of What Is that we each build, match all others’ representations always?

There was What Was (reality back then), always.

There is each of our interpretations of What Was, always.

Are they the same, always?

Do the representations of What Was that we each build, match all others’ representations always?

What are the reasons we as human beings do not all build the same representations always?

What are the reasons we as human beings connect and align with others, who have built similar representations always?

What is it we each have in common with all others, always?

What is it we each do not have in common with all others, always?

What we each have in common with all others is our brains, always.

What we each do not have in common with all others is what we have learned and ‘stored’ in those brains, always.

We each build our representations of What Is and What Was, using what we have learned by way of beliefs, always.

It is our beliefs that inform us about What Is and What Was, always.

When ours and others’ beliefs align, are in tune, the same, we create inner certainty, feel safe and connect, always.

When ours and others’ beliefs do not align, are not in tune, are not the same, we create inner uncertainty, feel unsafe and threatened, always.

Are we stuck in this paradigm, running in ‘automatic,’ where the brain creates cohesion between belief and reality, always?

Not if we rise in the level of consciousness we operate in, always.

Then we respond to What Is and choose, compassion and love always.

Humanity’s question:

How do we each, rise in our levels of consciousness, always?

There is Reality & there is our Representation of it. They are not the same.

Not one Human Being (Scientists included), or for that matter, creature on the planet, ‘knows’ reality i.e. What Is.

Controversial? 😱

What we know, is the representation we have built of it in our mind / body.

We do not react or respond to reality, we react or respond to the representation we have built of it and yes we do have instinctual responses ‘programmed’ within us. (Instinctual behaviour is the inherited ability of an organism to respond to a specific stimulus.)

We do not however live our lives mainly driven by natural instincts.

We LEARN what reality is, we are taught by our own experience, by our parents, by others, by the culture we are raised in, by the language(s) we learn, the beliefs and values we learn, using them to ‘label’ and ‘understand’ reality .

A lot of the learning about reality takes place when we are babies / toddlers / children.

We learn labels, scripts, patterns of thinking, habits,  beliefs, values etc that ‘equip’ us (in a range of useful to not useful) to ‘deal’ with reality.

We then live our lives in a ‘Thought Bubble’ that we create ABOUT reality using those labels, scripts, patterns etc.  Note:- we may learn to ‘hijack / take over’ some instinctive patterns within the ‘Thought Bubble’ and then modify them, for example the FEAR response.  The majority of us are not aware of living in the ‘Thought Bubble,’ and normally never question our thoughts ABOUT reality.

Belief:- an internally held representation of a lens through which we perceive reality. (We have thousands that vary by context) and we learn them all.

We build our representation of reality (Thought Bubble) by way of those learned beliefs (lenses).

Some of those beliefs operate at a level below conscious awareness and are know as cognitive biases e.g. confirmation bias.

There are many, many cognitive biases, just google. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/50-cognitive-biases-in-the-modern-world/

It is NOT seeing is believing, it is BELIEVING is seeing.

You may have heard the quotation “Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man.” ~Aristotle.

An issue arises:-

> A prime driver for every creature is to survive and thrive.

> A subset of that driver is to keep ourselves SAFE.

> Lack of safety triggers FEAR.

> As a child, our young immature brain learns patterns to minimize the stress caused by fear (feeling unsafe)

The brain learns by repetition, by repeating those thoughts about how to avoid fear. Some beliefs we may form are:-

I’m not good enough – I must please everyone – I need to be perfect etc. then I’ll be safe

These are known as injunctions and drivers

 

> We also learn patterns and scripts as the stimulus (lack of safety), triggers FEAR.

What may happen then is, that FEAR dominates how we live our lives and drives / motivates our thoughts, emotions and behaviours. In this state of course, we are not normally aware that we LEARNED these patterns and scripts, we are just aware that well, this is my life, this is how I am, look at what’s happening to me etc. In fact we develop a VICTIM mentality where of course there is also a ‘Persecutor’ and a ‘Rescuer’ we live our lives as the VICTIM in the Drama Triangle.  Actually, we all play each of the roles  and you may recognise them playing out in your life.

 

Until what?

There is a question I like:-

Is your Mind your Master or are you the Master of your Mind?

When our Mind is our Master we kind of run in ‘automatic mode’ perceiving reality through those learned beliefs / lenses  (within our thought bubble) and mainly reacting to Reality (What Is), following the old scripts and patterns that we learned. You may notice in a Team meeting for example, childhood patterns emerging and playing out, its like being back in the school playground.🤷🤪🤬🤯😒😖😜🤷‍♂️

As I said, some patterns of thoughts and strategies may serve us well. Others perhaps, not so much.

As we learn to become Master of our Mind, its like we operate at a different level of consciousness and are much more likely to think about our thinking / how we are representing ‘things?’ Pausing and choosing how to respond, rather than reacting to the representation of Reality we have built . We recognise also  perhaps a few of those beliefs e.g. “I’m not good enough” that we have learned do not perhaps serve us well and because we are Masters of our Mind, we can choose to  change those beliefs.

  • How are you representing the reality of issues,  problems in your life?
  • What belief might you CHOOSE to Change?
  • How might you reframe the representations of reality you have built?

What is the impact, of my beliefs on my reality?

He does not believe, who does not live according to his belief.  

 Thomas Fuller

How do your beliefs impact the  perception you hold about reality?

  • Little or not at all?
  • They have some effect?
  • High?
  • Total. My beliefs absolutely define how the reality of my life is, the good aspects, the not quite so good and the most challenging?

Think again about the journey of you becoming you.

We are Born

We begin to learn and form beliefs about  reality, from direct experience and from what the big people around us teach us to believe. We are very trusting of the big people😯😀

We learn to believe in our beliefs as they help us build a representation of reality.

We learn to trust that representation of reality, because it “works”. We look through the lenses of our beliefs and “see that it is so” and then learn of course, “I am right” and now defend our representation of reality, as if our very life is threatened.

 

 

 

What we ‘see’, becomes true for us, our truth.

We form Points of View, views from a Point!

We sense threat when others disagree with our view on reality (because our representation is, you know, actually real-‘Duh’ 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️)

Our Amygdala floods the body with cortisol and adrenaline, and we are in ‘fight-flight-freeze acting as if our very life is in real danger  with our mature thinking, Prefrontal Cortex  shut down! 😖

As this happens over and over again, we are learning that if people disagree with us, we need to win the ‘battle’, otherwise the emotion, the feelings we get in our body, will not be good🤯. The brain learns by repetition and this reinforces the belief ‘I am right.’

So it is, that we become defined, not by the reality that is ‘out there’, rather we are defined by what we believe, what our lenses, perceive…

It is that perception and our consequent representation, which becomes true for us.

Thus we become what we believe, e.g. Needing to be perfect, not good enough, better than everybody else, confident, not confident, able to listen, not able to listen, bullied, bullying, nervous, certain, over-analysing, taking everything personally, etc etc.

  • Unless?
  • Unless what?

We change our mindset about changing beliefs?

Change your beliefs – Change your life

A question to ask yourself

Is your mind your master? Or Are you the master of your mind?  

 

How does the Brain represent Reality part 1?

Figure 1 vakog

What are representational systems? See also part 2

Put another way, how does the brain re-present reality? (This entry is from the teachings of NLP).
The reasons you’d want to know about this are:-
• Your preferred system affects how you understand the ‘world’ out there
• We don’t all have the same preference and therefore do not all have the same ways of describing or talking about reality.
• Once you know your preference, you can exploit its strengths and begin to become more flexible by exploring other representational systems
What is this about?
A useful way to think about representational systems is; we experience the world through our five (or maybe there are six 🙂 ) senses, i.e. we see (visual), hear (auditory), feel (kinesthetic) smell (olfactory), taste (gustatory) and maybe we could include having a sixth sense (intuit). I will refer to the five using the acronym  (vakog). Let me take gustatory as an example. When you have a meal you obviously taste the food and this strongly involves your sense of smell, (olfactory). The other senses are also involved of course, we see the food (visual), we feel the textures (kinesthetic) and we hear (auditory) and this is maybe more subtle, the sounds of cutlery, conversation, maybe background noise in a restaurant. Etc. Thus there is a whole experience laid down as a set of patterns in our brains, driven by each of the five senses. This is an important notion here, that as we experience life ‘out there’, we lay down patterns internally, to represent the experience, using our five senses to drive that, see Figure 1 vakog

I trained in NLP back in 1996, with John Seymour, here he is explaining about Visual Auditory and Kinesthetic

If we now, let’s say, sometime after the meal, want to remember the experience then it is as if we relive the experience internally, triggering each of the senses. As an example let me ask you to think about cutting a lemon in half, removing the pips, then biting into the flesh, you can feel your mouth salivating now, at the expected sourness to come.

What am I saying here?
• We experience the world through our senses
• That experience is laid down as patterns in our brains
. We represent what is out there, internally in our minds
• We can ‘relive’ the experience by recalling the pattern / representation
It may or may not surprise you to know that when we lay down and recall memories we have a preferred system for doing that. The visual, auditory and kinesthetic are the primary systems used in most western cultures. Olfactory and gustatory are minor and usually lumped with kinesthetic. Another fact that may help you, is to know that our learning styles are closely aligned with visual, auditory and kinesthetic.

Think about the way you learn best.

  • By seeing pictures?
  • By listening?
  • By direct experience?