| 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 in a universal species-wide sense. We must do this because we have no sane 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 is vitally true about our circumstances, i.e. what’s happening?, if each of us gains some perspective on his or her own particular “ism”, or existential belief, or nexus of shared “ismic” thoughts. Why? Because such beliefs are filters affecting our perceptions, biasing our perspectives in ways of which we often remain largely unconscious. We can gain a more conscious perspective if we find an accurate answer to the question “Who’s doing what of urgency or importance to whom?”. Because the word "accurate" today usually implies a judgment, 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 Balancing Truth: A Process of Accurate Exchange? |
| (c) 2008-9, all rights reserved by Angus Cunningham President, Authentix Coaches angusc@authentixcoaches.com |
| What I hope to convey by the diagram above is that, to grow our life wisdom, we must keep balancing consciously the instinctual-emotional values of loyalty to family, community, income- earning organization, political entity, hero, ideology, or self with some other value that we have rational cause to believe will restore our equanimity. 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 of these 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 counter depression and/or desperation by adopting one or another of a huge range of either workaholic or cynical attitudes (of which there are many inglorious variants); or we escape confronting our realities by entertaining fantasies or ingesting mood-altering substances, including manufactured food or drink. 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, cultural, sub-cultural, tribal, or familial 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, that is to say a balancing value, to such habits of loyalty as we have taken on that have since begun troubling us (or others?). What might that counterbalance be? In my life, application of the Question of Agency Clarity (Discovering an answer to "who's doing what of urgency or importance to whom?") pushes me to discover a deeper truth that draws me into coherence with a larger whole than the sub-cultures and cultures with which I have become familiar. It serves as a counterbalance to any unlimited loyalty and prevents it from becoming unhealthy, in effect a co-dependency. Answering the Question of Agency Clarity enlightens my natural loyalties through both a rational and a reasonable process and enables 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 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 through Rational Emoto-Linguistics, you may want to click on one or another of the following navigation bars: Toronto, Canada, 080903-091001, excerpted from manuscript of "Rational Presence", to be published in 2009 |
| My particular approach to answering accurately the question "Who's doing what to whom?" has evolved from utter confusion and massive anxiety along a path that, hopefully, combines authenticity and empathy more than is “normal” today. It began with my recognition that the word "accuracy" originally meant, in its original Latin, "towards a state of caring", i.e. finding a way out from being careless. It continues by inquiring into those fields of knowing that seem to hold the key to a broader coherence with people, particularly those whom my interlocutors appear to be forgetting. As our skills in communicating, i.e. listening and articulating, grow in authenticity and empathy, we learn to 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 vaguely aware. Question: In the diagram below, what label would you put in the box marked “????” |
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