| Why not a Gnosis? |
| Whose moment for a Gnosis? Balancing the Motifs of Gender & Psycho-Analysis |
| (c) 2008-9, all rights reserved, by Angus Cunningham President, Authentix Coaches angusc@authentixcoaches.com |
Do you recall the song “Killing me softly with his song”? It was a hit a couple of decades ago and is
still today (April 2008) a regular on popular music radio shows. The singer is always a woman and
the song enables her to give voice to a hard-to-explain complaint: her man’s way of being is
seriously suppressing hers -- but so softly she scarcely can find social justification for protesting.
“I’m just a guy whose intentions are good. Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood”. A hit at
about the same time as Killing me softly, this song lets a man voice quite another plea: for release
from the agony of having his good intentions misinterpreted as otherwise.
In the traditionally held gender stereotypes of the psychology of the 20th Century, women were
widely assumed to know their emotions and to be oppressed by men who didn't, and men were
assumed to be thinkers whose thoughts were often disconnected from their emotions. How can
these core motifs of genderism, or the "war of the sexes", be balanced for the severe trials that
most of us will confront for the next several years at least?
still today (April 2008) a regular on popular music radio shows. The singer is always a woman and
the song enables her to give voice to a hard-to-explain complaint: her man’s way of being is
seriously suppressing hers -- but so softly she scarcely can find social justification for protesting.
“I’m just a guy whose intentions are good. Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood”. A hit at
about the same time as Killing me softly, this song lets a man voice quite another plea: for release
from the agony of having his good intentions misinterpreted as otherwise.
In the traditionally held gender stereotypes of the psychology of the 20th Century, women were
widely assumed to know their emotions and to be oppressed by men who didn't, and men were
assumed to be thinkers whose thoughts were often disconnected from their emotions. How can
these core motifs of genderism, or the "war of the sexes", be balanced for the severe trials that
most of us will confront for the next several years at least?
Perhaps we can find clues in these two songs. I have discussed their motifs with quite a few people. Few women
recall the man’s song. All of both genders recall the woman’s song. All agree that the material lot of women
improved substantially during the 20th Century and that women’s thirst to escape the boredom women were
experiencing in lives confined to the home has been substantially, but by no means entirely, quenched. Many
wonder whether, given the hectic pace of our currently market-driven lives, this signal improvement won by women
and the men aware enough to be their political supporters has gained anyone participating in family life – whether
as a parent, child, or grandparent – anything worth having. Most also wonder why men continue to “feel
misunderstood”.
A problem common to both genders is, I believe, that we live in an "age of diagnosis". Our habit of applying the
tools and skills of objective science into making a diagnosis, a habit widely held to be the source of much progress,
may now be an under-recognized source of discord. I write this essay to elaborate this idea, and also to propose
what I believe can be a solution for many, if not all, of us.
The way of thinking and conversing practiced by objective scientists has helped the Western-oriented world to have
great success in manipulating the world of objects through mechanical, chemical, electrical, electronic, electro-
magnetic, and nuclear means. So what could be more natural in our evolution as a civilization than for people to
utilize a way of thinking and conversing proven successful in manipulating the world of objects to addressing issues
arising in personal relationships? Given that we now know that the field of experience in which most mental-
emotional turmoil occurs is indeed personal relations, this would have been the naturally logical direction in which to
expect, given our success in science, progress. Indeed, we began applying the techniques of objective science to
this field in the 19th Century, and by the end of the 20th the profession most identified with that approach --
psychiatry -- had grown to have great influence, especially in countries where its diagnoses have become a key
factor in the profession's system of compensation by government.
But a mind is not an object. The convention of repeating the means, objective analysis, of the success we have had
in manipulating the physical world is therefore worth calling into question when we find ourselves doing it with minds.
A Cambridge friend of mine tells me that the ancient Greek, Hippocrates, said that mind and body are not separable,
but that Plato and Aristotle maintained that they were. Today, although we frequently use the words "mind" and
"body", no scientist has ever been able to define in words the boundary between a physical body and a non-physical
mind. After glibly using these words for two thousand years since the fathers of Western medicine, philosophy, and
science disagreed over whether the mind and body are distinguishable scientifically, we must, I believe, today accept
that, scientifically, they are not. Yet people, and not just lay people but professional people like doctors and
psychiatrists, appear still to be using the words "mind" and "body" as if these two entities were actually separable.
Fortunately, some writers, mainly from the fields of psychotherapy and alternative healing modalities, have begun in
the last generation or so to use the words "mindbody" and "bodymind". This nomenclature reflects much better
what we actually do know scientifically; but, unfortunately, it is only slowly catching on.
How serious this issue is becomes clearer when we think about how we are accustomed to communicate abstract
ideas. We usually employ metaphors derived from descriptions of concrete objects -- for example, "he has a sharp
mind" -- for this purpose. Such common sayings draw on our senses of a concrete object, in this case that of a knife
or a sword, to indicate a quality of a person's personality. OK, so we all know what a knife or a sword are, but what
would be the affect on a troubled person's experience in a relationship if he or she had been diagnosed by a third
party as "having a sharp mind"? How would your spouse's opinion of you be affected if such a diagnosis were made
of you? Well, you and your spouse might well be able to work out a solution if a friend were to offer such a "natural
diagnosis", although there is a risk you might not. But what if your spouse were to pick up such a notion from a
psychiatrist? Is that an unimpeachable authority? And suppose also that you and your spouse were having difficulty
agreeing what schooling to give your child and you had reached your wits' end trying to find common ground and
then a psychiatrist diagnoses your mind as being a sharp one? Would that affect the outcome of the issue you and
your spouse were grappling with? It surely would -- although not in very predictable ways.
Following the tradition of the medical science out of which psychiatry was born, psychiatrists have invented ways to
categorize the habits of behavior and thought they perceive in people experiencing emotional pain into commonly
occurring psychiatric types. But, what truly are the habits of thought observable in another when only the outward
consequence of some bodymind process, and not the thought itself, is directly observable? Unless we remain very
aware of these subtleties, we will be very likely to try to repeat the successes our civilization has had in the realm of
manipulating objects by referring to each other diagnostically, i.e. as being an example of one or another
psychological type. And if that happens, we can easily fall into the habit of treating each other as having the
characteristics of objects rather than of personalities capable of honest growth.
Psychiatrists are often ingenious in finding ways to transcend the linguistic limitations within which they and the rest
of us make use of the science of their profession. For example, Ron Charach, a Toronto psychiatrist, has published
eight books of poems -- the latest being "Selected Portraits" (available from Indigo/Chapters and Amazon) -- to
convey his healing messages to psychiatric survivors and their family members. But many if not most of the rest of
us are still at the stage of studying popular books on psychoanalytic theories and managerial psychology -- books in
which the linguistic limitations of quintessentially diagnostic psychoanalysis are rarely, if at all, made clear.
When one tries the skills of analysis learned from success in predicting what will be the consequences of actions one
takes in the objective physical world of houses, cars, kitchens, and machines, into desires for success in predicting
the implications of diagnostic categories upon another, one is dipping into mind-reading. Indeed, listening closely,
one finds much mind-reading occurring beneath the surface of many ordinary conversations today.
To return to the two songs with which we began. In the first song, a woman -- apparently assuming that power
resides entirely outside herself -- has resentful anxiety about the oppressive influence a man has over her. Perhaps
the woman is extending our species' traditional successes in predictive thinking in the world of domestic objects by
presuming that the intentions of a man have not evolved much from his predecessors. In the second song, the man
may be aware that the sensitivity to women's feelings of his male predecessors was abysmal and is bemoaning his
angst that, as a consequence, women so often incorrectly presume his intentions -- now much evolved from the days
when man dominated public life -- to be only as insensitive as his predecessors’. These are only hypotheses, of
course. What the songwriters actually had in mind, we can only know if we have both the curiosity to ask and the
means to gain satisfaction. If we fail in one or the other, we are prone to try to meet our needs to know by falling
into the presumptive habit of believing we can mind-read.
Let us note here that the woman singer is actually blaming her man. What, however, actually is his intention? Will
she make the effort to ask, or will she fall into the trap of mind-reading? If she does, she may, depending on her
predisposition, either make herself feel worse or miss an opportunity for clarifying her feelings and so miss giving him
a chance to change his behaviour so that she feels better. Although our guesses of another's thinking can
sometimes seem to be true, rigorous testing of this notion invariably reveals that we cannot expect our guesses of
another’s intentions to be entirely accurate, no matter how widely and deeply we have studied psychoanalysis and
its many offshoots. Given this ineluctable truth, is it not now time to start letting go of diagnostic thinking in our
approaches to developing and maintaining relationships?
Well, yes, but how? Well, we've tried the "Age of Diagnosis? So what about an "Age of Gnosis"? The term "Age of
Gnosis" sounds quaintly and esoterically pretentious, but please hang in! Gnosis is a Greek word meaning an
"incidence of knowing". Dia is a Greek word meaning "across". Thus the word "diagnosis" is distinguished from the
word "gnosis" as being an incidence of claiming to know what is in another's mind. This being so, wouldn't your
diagnosis of me, or my diagnosis of you, be prone to the errors of mind-reading? Well, yes, of course, they would.
So, instead of pretending to know what is in another's mind, we might now try sharing what is in our own minds?
Well, is that possible? We all have some ideas in mind that are properly not others to know, and so sharing them
such ideas would not be wise. We shall, therefore, have to develop ways to protect ourselves from "giving
ourselves away". Nonetheless, if we can find such ways, we would be able to leave the inaccuracies and
presumptions of diagnoses to the world of inanimate sciences like engineering and physics and astronomy, and thus
permanently be able to avoid the often insulting and unnecessary building of accidental walls in relationships our
customary use of diagnostic skills erect. For that is indeed what such diagnoses do: they block our best efforts to
grow trust and/or intimacy in relationships of all kinds! Let us instead, therefore, find ways to express, safely, our
own gnoses more often, our own authentic, but yet non-diagnostic, knowings and intuitions. Let us, in other words,
find again the ancient, and well-proven, vitalizing paths of truth by practising empathic expression of only what we
authentically know, our gnoses. Let us lay off diagnoses of others!!
What might such an approach require of us? I have 'X emotion' now is the verbal expression of a gnosis.
Authentix Coaches has been testing this format for personal gnosis for much more than a decade now, and we
have found that not only is it a way of verbalizing one's own truth of the moment, it is also the safest way of being
authentic without presuming to know what is in another's mind. Because it is indeed free of presumption, such
expressions empower one to be authentic without danger of insulting. Authentix Coaches have also found that
use, in challenging (and potentially explosive) situations, of I have 'X emotion' now (IHXEN) expressions, where 'X
emotion' is limited to a noun, is a way of relieving emotional pressure without triggering distrust or inviting
"pushback". Indeed we have invariably found that its use always engenders a renewal of trust. In other words:
IHXEN truths build trust, while also relieving emotion!
To make use of this discovery, however, most us will need to expand our vocabulary of emotions, so following is a
starter list of emotion nouns. They denote emotions that many clients of Authentix Coaches have experienced as a
step toward discovery of profound and practical new insights into situations they had, until then, been experiencing
only as extremely troublesome:
recall the man’s song. All of both genders recall the woman’s song. All agree that the material lot of women
improved substantially during the 20th Century and that women’s thirst to escape the boredom women were
experiencing in lives confined to the home has been substantially, but by no means entirely, quenched. Many
wonder whether, given the hectic pace of our currently market-driven lives, this signal improvement won by women
and the men aware enough to be their political supporters has gained anyone participating in family life – whether
as a parent, child, or grandparent – anything worth having. Most also wonder why men continue to “feel
misunderstood”.
A problem common to both genders is, I believe, that we live in an "age of diagnosis". Our habit of applying the
tools and skills of objective science into making a diagnosis, a habit widely held to be the source of much progress,
may now be an under-recognized source of discord. I write this essay to elaborate this idea, and also to propose
what I believe can be a solution for many, if not all, of us.
The way of thinking and conversing practiced by objective scientists has helped the Western-oriented world to have
great success in manipulating the world of objects through mechanical, chemical, electrical, electronic, electro-
magnetic, and nuclear means. So what could be more natural in our evolution as a civilization than for people to
utilize a way of thinking and conversing proven successful in manipulating the world of objects to addressing issues
arising in personal relationships? Given that we now know that the field of experience in which most mental-
emotional turmoil occurs is indeed personal relations, this would have been the naturally logical direction in which to
expect, given our success in science, progress. Indeed, we began applying the techniques of objective science to
this field in the 19th Century, and by the end of the 20th the profession most identified with that approach --
psychiatry -- had grown to have great influence, especially in countries where its diagnoses have become a key
factor in the profession's system of compensation by government.
But a mind is not an object. The convention of repeating the means, objective analysis, of the success we have had
in manipulating the physical world is therefore worth calling into question when we find ourselves doing it with minds.
A Cambridge friend of mine tells me that the ancient Greek, Hippocrates, said that mind and body are not separable,
but that Plato and Aristotle maintained that they were. Today, although we frequently use the words "mind" and
"body", no scientist has ever been able to define in words the boundary between a physical body and a non-physical
mind. After glibly using these words for two thousand years since the fathers of Western medicine, philosophy, and
science disagreed over whether the mind and body are distinguishable scientifically, we must, I believe, today accept
that, scientifically, they are not. Yet people, and not just lay people but professional people like doctors and
psychiatrists, appear still to be using the words "mind" and "body" as if these two entities were actually separable.
Fortunately, some writers, mainly from the fields of psychotherapy and alternative healing modalities, have begun in
the last generation or so to use the words "mindbody" and "bodymind". This nomenclature reflects much better
what we actually do know scientifically; but, unfortunately, it is only slowly catching on.
How serious this issue is becomes clearer when we think about how we are accustomed to communicate abstract
ideas. We usually employ metaphors derived from descriptions of concrete objects -- for example, "he has a sharp
mind" -- for this purpose. Such common sayings draw on our senses of a concrete object, in this case that of a knife
or a sword, to indicate a quality of a person's personality. OK, so we all know what a knife or a sword are, but what
would be the affect on a troubled person's experience in a relationship if he or she had been diagnosed by a third
party as "having a sharp mind"? How would your spouse's opinion of you be affected if such a diagnosis were made
of you? Well, you and your spouse might well be able to work out a solution if a friend were to offer such a "natural
diagnosis", although there is a risk you might not. But what if your spouse were to pick up such a notion from a
psychiatrist? Is that an unimpeachable authority? And suppose also that you and your spouse were having difficulty
agreeing what schooling to give your child and you had reached your wits' end trying to find common ground and
then a psychiatrist diagnoses your mind as being a sharp one? Would that affect the outcome of the issue you and
your spouse were grappling with? It surely would -- although not in very predictable ways.
Following the tradition of the medical science out of which psychiatry was born, psychiatrists have invented ways to
categorize the habits of behavior and thought they perceive in people experiencing emotional pain into commonly
occurring psychiatric types. But, what truly are the habits of thought observable in another when only the outward
consequence of some bodymind process, and not the thought itself, is directly observable? Unless we remain very
aware of these subtleties, we will be very likely to try to repeat the successes our civilization has had in the realm of
manipulating objects by referring to each other diagnostically, i.e. as being an example of one or another
psychological type. And if that happens, we can easily fall into the habit of treating each other as having the
characteristics of objects rather than of personalities capable of honest growth.
Psychiatrists are often ingenious in finding ways to transcend the linguistic limitations within which they and the rest
of us make use of the science of their profession. For example, Ron Charach, a Toronto psychiatrist, has published
eight books of poems -- the latest being "Selected Portraits" (available from Indigo/Chapters and Amazon) -- to
convey his healing messages to psychiatric survivors and their family members. But many if not most of the rest of
us are still at the stage of studying popular books on psychoanalytic theories and managerial psychology -- books in
which the linguistic limitations of quintessentially diagnostic psychoanalysis are rarely, if at all, made clear.
When one tries the skills of analysis learned from success in predicting what will be the consequences of actions one
takes in the objective physical world of houses, cars, kitchens, and machines, into desires for success in predicting
the implications of diagnostic categories upon another, one is dipping into mind-reading. Indeed, listening closely,
one finds much mind-reading occurring beneath the surface of many ordinary conversations today.
To return to the two songs with which we began. In the first song, a woman -- apparently assuming that power
resides entirely outside herself -- has resentful anxiety about the oppressive influence a man has over her. Perhaps
the woman is extending our species' traditional successes in predictive thinking in the world of domestic objects by
presuming that the intentions of a man have not evolved much from his predecessors. In the second song, the man
may be aware that the sensitivity to women's feelings of his male predecessors was abysmal and is bemoaning his
angst that, as a consequence, women so often incorrectly presume his intentions -- now much evolved from the days
when man dominated public life -- to be only as insensitive as his predecessors’. These are only hypotheses, of
course. What the songwriters actually had in mind, we can only know if we have both the curiosity to ask and the
means to gain satisfaction. If we fail in one or the other, we are prone to try to meet our needs to know by falling
into the presumptive habit of believing we can mind-read.
Let us note here that the woman singer is actually blaming her man. What, however, actually is his intention? Will
she make the effort to ask, or will she fall into the trap of mind-reading? If she does, she may, depending on her
predisposition, either make herself feel worse or miss an opportunity for clarifying her feelings and so miss giving him
a chance to change his behaviour so that she feels better. Although our guesses of another's thinking can
sometimes seem to be true, rigorous testing of this notion invariably reveals that we cannot expect our guesses of
another’s intentions to be entirely accurate, no matter how widely and deeply we have studied psychoanalysis and
its many offshoots. Given this ineluctable truth, is it not now time to start letting go of diagnostic thinking in our
approaches to developing and maintaining relationships?
Well, yes, but how? Well, we've tried the "Age of Diagnosis? So what about an "Age of Gnosis"? The term "Age of
Gnosis" sounds quaintly and esoterically pretentious, but please hang in! Gnosis is a Greek word meaning an
"incidence of knowing". Dia is a Greek word meaning "across". Thus the word "diagnosis" is distinguished from the
word "gnosis" as being an incidence of claiming to know what is in another's mind. This being so, wouldn't your
diagnosis of me, or my diagnosis of you, be prone to the errors of mind-reading? Well, yes, of course, they would.
So, instead of pretending to know what is in another's mind, we might now try sharing what is in our own minds?
Well, is that possible? We all have some ideas in mind that are properly not others to know, and so sharing them
such ideas would not be wise. We shall, therefore, have to develop ways to protect ourselves from "giving
ourselves away". Nonetheless, if we can find such ways, we would be able to leave the inaccuracies and
presumptions of diagnoses to the world of inanimate sciences like engineering and physics and astronomy, and thus
permanently be able to avoid the often insulting and unnecessary building of accidental walls in relationships our
customary use of diagnostic skills erect. For that is indeed what such diagnoses do: they block our best efforts to
grow trust and/or intimacy in relationships of all kinds! Let us instead, therefore, find ways to express, safely, our
own gnoses more often, our own authentic, but yet non-diagnostic, knowings and intuitions. Let us, in other words,
find again the ancient, and well-proven, vitalizing paths of truth by practising empathic expression of only what we
authentically know, our gnoses. Let us lay off diagnoses of others!!
What might such an approach require of us? I have 'X emotion' now is the verbal expression of a gnosis.
Authentix Coaches has been testing this format for personal gnosis for much more than a decade now, and we
have found that not only is it a way of verbalizing one's own truth of the moment, it is also the safest way of being
authentic without presuming to know what is in another's mind. Because it is indeed free of presumption, such
expressions empower one to be authentic without danger of insulting. Authentix Coaches have also found that
use, in challenging (and potentially explosive) situations, of I have 'X emotion' now (IHXEN) expressions, where 'X
emotion' is limited to a noun, is a way of relieving emotional pressure without triggering distrust or inviting
"pushback". Indeed we have invariably found that its use always engenders a renewal of trust. In other words:
IHXEN truths build trust, while also relieving emotion!
To make use of this discovery, however, most us will need to expand our vocabulary of emotions, so following is a
starter list of emotion nouns. They denote emotions that many clients of Authentix Coaches have experienced as a
step toward discovery of profound and practical new insights into situations they had, until then, been experiencing
only as extremely troublesome:
Awe, joy, rue, ease, hope, hurt, jeal, love, need, rage, bliss, dread, grief,
guilt, hurt, mirth, peace, poise, pride, trust, shame, shock, scorn, stress,
thrill, want, angst, fear, zeal, alarm, anger, anguish, askance, boredom,
challenge, complaint, concern, contempt, craving, delight, desire, disgust,
dismay, distress, envy, fury, fatigue, horror, hurry, panic, passion, pleasure,
regret, relief, resolve, sorrow, surprise, tension, trial, upset, worry, yearning,
agony, ecstasy, approval, assurance, buoyancy, defiance, dilemma, elation,
jealousy, potency, quandary, deference, gratitude, ignorance, injustice,
interest, impotence, lassitude, misgiving, suffering, confusion, dejection,
exhaustion, frustration, obsession, vexation, adamancy, expectancy,
ambivalence, despondency, difficulty, disapproval, pensivity, perplexity,
solemnity, tranquility, agitation, aspiration, expectancy, curiosity,
fascination, indignation, irritation, obligation, protestation, satisfaction,
anticipation, disconsolation, trepidation, equanimity, vulnerability.
guilt, hurt, mirth, peace, poise, pride, trust, shame, shock, scorn, stress,
thrill, want, angst, fear, zeal, alarm, anger, anguish, askance, boredom,
challenge, complaint, concern, contempt, craving, delight, desire, disgust,
dismay, distress, envy, fury, fatigue, horror, hurry, panic, passion, pleasure,
regret, relief, resolve, sorrow, surprise, tension, trial, upset, worry, yearning,
agony, ecstasy, approval, assurance, buoyancy, defiance, dilemma, elation,
jealousy, potency, quandary, deference, gratitude, ignorance, injustice,
interest, impotence, lassitude, misgiving, suffering, confusion, dejection,
exhaustion, frustration, obsession, vexation, adamancy, expectancy,
ambivalence, despondency, difficulty, disapproval, pensivity, perplexity,
solemnity, tranquility, agitation, aspiration, expectancy, curiosity,
fascination, indignation, irritation, obligation, protestation, satisfaction,
anticipation, disconsolation, trepidation, equanimity, vulnerability.
We can use this list to learn to sift through the feelings that arise after one has labeled one's emotion. If we do, we
are practising what Authentix Coaches term IHXEN self-monitoring and self-expression. (For convenience, we
pronounce the acronym IHXEN as "Eye-Zen"). One is then becoming the witness of one's emotion rather than
existentially believing oneself to be "stuck" in it. One has, in fact, begun to master the world of Rational
Emoto-Linguistics, a branch of psycholinguistics whose essence respects universal ethics.
Practising the IHXEN linguistic, our clients arrive at remarkably valuable insights. A series of such insights
empowered, for example, one enterprise owner and CEO to win an offer of $3 million in a stalled debt recovery
process. (A short narrative of this Authentix Coaches engagement, complete with its ROI, is available at the
following link). Another client used the technique to find a productive new role for an employee who had become
locked in acrimonious personal controversies that were stalling his company's productivity growth but in whom the
company had invested 10 years' learning in a rare specialty vital to the enterprise. Another learned to manage her
bipolar mood swings without drugs and found a whole new world of stability and intimacy.
We can begin to stimulate and accompany a shift toward a more gnostic focus amongst the people with whom we
have rapport by offering an IHXEN. This will encourage, if we are not too insistent, on reciprocal exchanges of
curiosity concerning what each others' gnoses are. When we do this we are only doing what speakers of French
and Portuguese, and perhaps other languages, often do today! More significantly, IHXENs help satisfy our need,
in seeking emotional maturity, to know what our emotions actually are. When we have, consciously, a label for
our emotion, we not only have begun to relieve it, we have also learned much of what we need to know of our
emotional "bias". Such knowing facilitates honesty in the evolution of relationships without exposing us to the risks
of naturally frank speaking, which often manifests as diagnoses. We thereby minimize the inadvertent risk of the
painful divisions and crises that so often are triggered by mind-reading judgments. By such means we minimize the
distractions and dangers of serious misunderstandings. In sum, by shifting the balance of focus from diagnosis to
gnosis, we acquire the skills both to express our own particular authenticities and to have our worries about others'
intents relieved by the gaining of data rather than reliance upon the fantasies of hasty mind-reading. In
partnerships, we find new ways to grow in skills of empathy and hopefully also of acknowledgement.
In the Age of Gnosis now dawning, might we find the ancient "war of the sexes" slowly subsiding, in due course,
into "a peace of gender coherence"!
And finally, what about the man singer? Well, he's pleading with his saviour. Will he be saved? Perhaps he will be.
We can certainly hope so and wish him well. But what if his saviour is too busy, or doesn't think the time is ripe, for
whatever reason, to do the saving requested? What can he do then? Because Authentix coaches believe that by
sharing experiential wisdom on the topics of learning and leading we all grow in ways salvational to our planetary
civilization, we have contributed a series of essays on deep issues such as this one on our website. You can find
them by clicking on the Services to Leaders navigation button below, and then looking for the Leadership Essays
button. Or you can write to the author directly.
Toronto, 080723-090520, excerpted from "Presumption Free!", to be published in 2009 -- Permissions
are practising what Authentix Coaches term IHXEN self-monitoring and self-expression. (For convenience, we
pronounce the acronym IHXEN as "Eye-Zen"). One is then becoming the witness of one's emotion rather than
existentially believing oneself to be "stuck" in it. One has, in fact, begun to master the world of Rational
Emoto-Linguistics, a branch of psycholinguistics whose essence respects universal ethics.
Practising the IHXEN linguistic, our clients arrive at remarkably valuable insights. A series of such insights
empowered, for example, one enterprise owner and CEO to win an offer of $3 million in a stalled debt recovery
process. (A short narrative of this Authentix Coaches engagement, complete with its ROI, is available at the
following link). Another client used the technique to find a productive new role for an employee who had become
locked in acrimonious personal controversies that were stalling his company's productivity growth but in whom the
company had invested 10 years' learning in a rare specialty vital to the enterprise. Another learned to manage her
bipolar mood swings without drugs and found a whole new world of stability and intimacy.
We can begin to stimulate and accompany a shift toward a more gnostic focus amongst the people with whom we
have rapport by offering an IHXEN. This will encourage, if we are not too insistent, on reciprocal exchanges of
curiosity concerning what each others' gnoses are. When we do this we are only doing what speakers of French
and Portuguese, and perhaps other languages, often do today! More significantly, IHXENs help satisfy our need,
in seeking emotional maturity, to know what our emotions actually are. When we have, consciously, a label for
our emotion, we not only have begun to relieve it, we have also learned much of what we need to know of our
emotional "bias". Such knowing facilitates honesty in the evolution of relationships without exposing us to the risks
of naturally frank speaking, which often manifests as diagnoses. We thereby minimize the inadvertent risk of the
painful divisions and crises that so often are triggered by mind-reading judgments. By such means we minimize the
distractions and dangers of serious misunderstandings. In sum, by shifting the balance of focus from diagnosis to
gnosis, we acquire the skills both to express our own particular authenticities and to have our worries about others'
intents relieved by the gaining of data rather than reliance upon the fantasies of hasty mind-reading. In
partnerships, we find new ways to grow in skills of empathy and hopefully also of acknowledgement.
In the Age of Gnosis now dawning, might we find the ancient "war of the sexes" slowly subsiding, in due course,
into "a peace of gender coherence"!
And finally, what about the man singer? Well, he's pleading with his saviour. Will he be saved? Perhaps he will be.
We can certainly hope so and wish him well. But what if his saviour is too busy, or doesn't think the time is ripe, for
whatever reason, to do the saving requested? What can he do then? Because Authentix coaches believe that by
sharing experiential wisdom on the topics of learning and leading we all grow in ways salvational to our planetary
civilization, we have contributed a series of essays on deep issues such as this one on our website. You can find
them by clicking on the Services to Leaders navigation button below, and then looking for the Leadership Essays
button. Or you can write to the author directly.
Toronto, 080723-090520, excerpted from "Presumption Free!", to be published in 2009 -- Permissions
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Latest Revision: 090520
