| Together and apart we, the human race, must now choose, and sometimes blaze, ways and paths of evolving sapiently – that is to say wisely, but wisely for an evolving universal species- wide aim. We each participate in this, wittingly or unwittingly. And we have no viable alternative to giving proper attention to such of what we sense, after deep reflection and meditation, as the unchangeable data of our circumstances and the apparently ineluctable realities of our fellow creatures. My thesis is that we can only become aware of what we truly need to know about our circumstances to participate wisely if each of us is gaining perspective on his or her own particular “ism”, or existential belief, or nexus of shared “ismic” thoughts, or "I am ...." presuppositions. Why? Because such beliefs are filters affecting our perceptions, biasing our perspectives in ways of which we often remain largely unconscious. Sometimes such beliefs serve us as a race; but sometimes they do not. We all need beliefs, of course, to stay individually sane; but we also need beliefs that embrace more and more of reality, i.e. growing beliefs, if the race of which we are members is to stay vital. And this is especially true of our implicit beliefs as to who we are. One has a more consciously present knowing of who one is when one finds an answer to the question “What's happening of urgency or importance to whom?” in which one's own role in what's happening is clear. For this purpose, you may want to review an essay entitled "Navigating the Seas of Judgment: Damned if you do, or damned if you don't?", by clicking here. You may also want to consider the different intents implied by the words "frank", "honest", "authentic", and "accurate": .. |
| Finding the "Vital & Vitalizing Truth": A Process of Accurate Exchange? .. |
| (c) 2008-11, all rights reserved by Angus Cunningham President, Authentix Coaches angusc@authentixcoaches.com |
What I wish to convey by the diagram above is that, to grow our life wisdom for humanity as a whole, we must keep balancing consciously the instinctual-emotional values of loyalty to family, community, income-earning organization, political entity, hero, ideology, personality, etc., with some other value that we have rational cause to believe will restore our equanimity in relationships. We usually learn, in the ordinary courses of our own particular experiences of socialization, to adhere in some degree of loyalty to one or more individuals, groups, or philosophical tenets. We learn the value of loyalty from recognizing that, in both history and the expectations of which we are aware in our social lives, heroes are acclaimed for their loyalty. As we mature, unbounded loyalty to less than the whole of which we are aware begins to strike us as hypocritical in our fellows, and in due course, we can expect to become aware of some overlooked hypocrisy in ourselves. When this becomes apparent, many of us encounter depression and/or desperation, and we then are tempted to adopt one or another of a huge range of either workaholic or cynical attitudes (of which there are many peculiar variants); or we escape confronting our realities by entertaining fantasies or indulging in mood-altering habits such as ingesting manufactured food, drink, or drugs. In our attempts to escape the holds of these “isms” upon our implicit self-image is there any alternative to each of us discovering a unique purpose or series of purposes for his or her individual life? I believe that discovery of the aim, purposes, and a supporting series of goals, that will uniquely fill whatever void of meaning we each individually have at any moment in time is a way of freeing ourselves from whatever compulsive ethnic, familial, tribal, national, cultural, or sub-cultural, behaviours or “isms” still retain a vexing hold on us. Perhaps you agree, and if so, you might want to consider the idea that discovery of one's unique purposes requires of each of us a counterbalance. In other words we are perpetually in want of a value that balances such habits of loyalty to people or ideas as we have taken on that have since begun creating trouble for us or others. What might that counterbalance be? In my life, discovering answers to "What's happening to whom and why, and what is required next to happen?" what's happening of urgency leads me to discover successively deeper truths that draw me into coherence with a larger whole than the sub-cultures and cultures with which I have become familiar. Answering this question has helped me find a counterbalance to any unlimited loyalty to which I have become "addicted", and prevents me from getting stuck in a co-dependency. Answering these questions enlightens my 'natural' loyalties through both a rational and a reasonable process and leads me to discover insights to which I would otherwise be blind. What is your counterbalance to a value, such as loyalty, in which you have demonstrated exceptional fidelity? That, of course, is for you to determine. You can get some further insight into the issue of counterbalances for the loyalties you have to either people or ideas that are distracting you from paying attention to your inner compass of truth by exploring the pages at Authentix Coaching and Coaching Mediation. If you have a mandate for organizational leadership or a significant following as a writer, journalist, media commentator, or author, or if you have interest in Eye-Zen English -- a comprehensive approach to freeing your thinking and communications from relationship-sabotaging presumption or problem-solving irrationality through Rational Emoto-Linguistics -- you may want to click on one or another of the following navigation bars: Toronto, Canada, 080903-110803, excerpted from the manuscript of "Eye-Zen English: An Approach to Vital and Vitalizing Communications" .. |
My particular approach to answering accurately the questions "What's happening to whom and why, and what is required next to happen?" has evolved from utter confusion and massive anxiety along a path that aspires, still sometimes desperately!, to combine authenticity and empathy more than is “usual” today. It began with my recognition that the word "accuracy" originally meant, in its original Latin, "towards a state of caring", i.e. avoiding being careless. It continues by inquiring into those fields of knowing that seem, from my perspective, to hold a key to a fuller coherence with people, particularly those whom my usual interlocutors seem to be forgetting, and it does not exclude myself -- although it does not put myself first unless I know I have a strong need or want (but not desire!) that I have been ignoring. As our skills in communicating, i.e. listening and articulating, both, grow in empathy and authenticity, my experience has been that I learn that it is possible conciliate formerly impossible gaps between our personal interests and desires and the needs of a social whole of whose existence, and risks of extinction, we may be only discovering as we grow. To recognize that is to recognize that truth emerges for us out of a deliberate effort to balance. Since we are creatures largely of habit, I hypothesize that we find truth by balancing the loyalty we have to the past of people connections and idea associations with some other quality: .. |
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