Roc, thank you for writing this piece of raw honesty on viewing reality, completely agree with your points. I talked to my therapist about how tiring it is to actively subdue the thoughts. But again, it's like practising muscles at the gym. Again and again, tirelessly, replacing our egoic thoughts with the more conscious and present ones.
Appreciate it a lot Sekar, and thank you for reading. Yes, and it's important you know your body and keep at a pace you are comfortable with, which I know you are very in-tune with!
"At the start of last year, I got into a huge disagreement with my partner’s family which resulted in both my partner and I not speaking to them for over a year. It’s still somewhat unresolved to this day, so it’s a little raw to speak about." Oh I feel you!
We have a lot of unresolved issues with my husband's family. For them there's only ONE truth.
Completely feel you Kristina. This is their truth and therefore reality, and there's nothing wrong with it although we can feel intruded sometimes. That's why the understanding of identification with external objects of experience helped me a lot. People unfortunately lose themselves within their experience, so the best we can do is try to remain compassionate if you have a different level of awareness about you! Of course, always easier said than done!
What a compliment, I am blushing! 100% fascinating, best we can do is:
1. try to remain aware as one can about potential subconscious patterns/programs (& be willing to face them even they feel uncomfortable)
2. with that, remain open as possible because regardless of gender orientations (or any other orientation/structure) masculine and feminine energy pervades all around us, and having a balance is important!
As an aside but linked I once had published an academic piece on the impacts of these considerations (well beyond gender - age, ethnicity, class, etc etc) in research methodology. It was due to my experiences as a young white research lead academic conducting an international study in corporations. It was a large project involving Chinese and UK academics. It was a wild experience and the work, I’m told, broke ground on considering these impacts and the results we get access to. Enough of me.
Thanks for this tender and thought provoking article Roc. I'm curious about something and would love your take. When we delve into consciousness enquiry via other people's work and model/maps, how significant is it if those we choose/find most sense making are crafted by all men or all women? For instance if I'm drawn to writers who are men or identify as these - what impacts might this have on "overall attitude on life, perception of reality and therefore current operational level of truth". Could we expand our ways of thinking by venturing out well beyond what makes sense into more via other writers/genders. I ask as enquiry.
Hey Danusia, thank you again for taking the time to read 🙏 I wasn't quite sure of your question and I did have a few thought trains running at the same time but think I understood the essence. Please let me know if this captured it, otherwise let me know. It was a very thought-provoking question in any case!
If someone has been brought up with a certain gender orientation, this would form a large and foundational layer of subconscious material for which then all that person’s experience would be filtered through. Of course this is only one “layer” and then there would be many more like: which country they grew up in, what their cultural background was like, what their religious background was like and so on.
I think there's always going to be the tendency to have subconscious biases when humans engage in any type of activity, based on many factors where gender orientation would be but one of them. But to what level of influence it would have specifically and in isolation? Who knows! It would likely also vary depending on the activity itself and how identified the person is with whatever subconscious layer is running in the background while engaging in the activity.
From my own experience I naturally encountered David’s work, and then the same happened with Scott 7 months later. I did notice that David’s work seemed to resonate with a lot of logical type/critical thinkers though (I’m an analyst/solution designer in tech) so I thought about it from that lens rather than purely gender orientation. Then I guess you could say do more men have a tendency to be that? Maybe?
On the other hand my partner has taken interest in this material as well, but maybe that’s because she has to hear me all the time 😂 I’m open to consuming information from anyone regardless of anything really (to the best of my conscious abilities). The next parts I will be writing about would be viewed to be more ‘feminine’ in nature (trauma therapy, somatic therapy, intuition, manifesting) in terms of its energy, so much of the info I’ve consumed over the years has come from women on these topics!
Was a pleasure to read your reflections on consciousness and mapping consciousness. I am very interested in meta-awareness and the liminal (this is literally the entire topic of my substack) and I have to be honest with you, I have trouble with this consciousness mapping.
These states of awareness are mapped hierarchically, as thought we climb up this ladder to enlightenment. Realistically, I don’t think any of these states exist in isolation; they are all interconnected, interrelated; they all have both light and dark; and really enlightenment, I don’t believe is a separate state, but something more like the Tao, where everything is included.
In a particular moment, something might have me responding with fear, something else with love, and something else with neutrality. We are multidimensional beings.
As Fernando Pessoa said, « I have more souls than one. »
Something like the eternal witness- seeing everything — witnessing all the other states as they pass through us — but not judging, not responding, just being — I think that ultimate state of observation and detachment is enlightenment - but how many of us reach that state and maintain it?
I’m rambling. Anyway, thank you for this food for thought. Very interesting to see this figure!
Allie! Lovely to encounter you, and so cool to see we’ve got overlap!
I think you’re spot on with your view/critique of the hierarchical nature of the map.
I see the map as a spectrum of different *potential* states of consciousness for the human experience. But each state that is 'higher' includes all preceding states. Consciousness expands, it doesn't discard.
I say potential, because like everything, this map is a limitation on our existence which is rooted in boundlessness. Is enlightenment really the pinnacle of the human consciousness experience, or is that just an embedded belief that’s running in the subconscious of humanity off the back of 1000s of years of existence?
It must be a limitation because as soon as an experience is described, coined, termed, structured, illustrated etc... the resolution drops. The essence (or some essence) is lost.
For me, it’s usefulness is mostly around seeing the fundamental model for the first time and being able to understand a lot of things I had felt inside unspoken in an instant. Past that initial exposure to expanded awareness, I think the limitation has to be dropped in order to progress.
Roc - oh love what you said here, "consciousness expands, it doesn't discard." Mic drop!
Happy to have found your substack!
Could not agree more about how the transition from raw experience into translating that for sharing. That is fundamental to my motivation of understanding things. *That* space between. Words slice away at things -- concepts do, but my nature consciousness is embedded with them each time we interact with the world. Our brains start making patterns and creating meaning.
PS - post-structuralism has a lot to say about this -- Deleuze, Foucault, Guattari.
Well said Roc 🙌 there are so many people out there who don't even consider that their own reality is being influenced by external sources at such a level. I've been thinking about religion and what the core religions of the world were originally meant to be vs. what they actually are today. My current take is that we've moved further from "the source" with the implementation of so many rules and practices. They can be helpful at times, but also misleading. This one's still marinating for me... onto Part 3 in the meantime :)
A big realisation I had was it's no one's fault. The biggest limitation of structure we have is language and interpretation. Material that is "divinely inspired" as Alan Watts would call it, is felt, not spoken. Imagine how much resolution is lost once it filters through the experience of thought and perception and makes it all the way down into a published book... 🤯
Roc, thank you for writing this piece of raw honesty on viewing reality, completely agree with your points. I talked to my therapist about how tiring it is to actively subdue the thoughts. But again, it's like practising muscles at the gym. Again and again, tirelessly, replacing our egoic thoughts with the more conscious and present ones.
Appreciate it a lot Sekar, and thank you for reading. Yes, and it's important you know your body and keep at a pace you are comfortable with, which I know you are very in-tune with!
"At the start of last year, I got into a huge disagreement with my partner’s family which resulted in both my partner and I not speaking to them for over a year. It’s still somewhat unresolved to this day, so it’s a little raw to speak about." Oh I feel you!
We have a lot of unresolved issues with my husband's family. For them there's only ONE truth.
Completely feel you Kristina. This is their truth and therefore reality, and there's nothing wrong with it although we can feel intruded sometimes. That's why the understanding of identification with external objects of experience helped me a lot. People unfortunately lose themselves within their experience, so the best we can do is try to remain compassionate if you have a different level of awareness about you! Of course, always easier said than done!
Thank you Kristina 💜
It’s a special kind of unresolved issue Kristina!
See that’s why I enjoy your writing. Reflexive, and full bodied.
It’s fascinating how certain attributes are assigned to genders and the language we use to describe these.
Thank you for digging into this here and over in our messages! What a pleasure Roc.
What a compliment, I am blushing! 100% fascinating, best we can do is:
1. try to remain aware as one can about potential subconscious patterns/programs (& be willing to face them even they feel uncomfortable)
2. with that, remain open as possible because regardless of gender orientations (or any other orientation/structure) masculine and feminine energy pervades all around us, and having a balance is important!
Thank you again Danusia 💜
Beautiful. I’m with you!
As an aside but linked I once had published an academic piece on the impacts of these considerations (well beyond gender - age, ethnicity, class, etc etc) in research methodology. It was due to my experiences as a young white research lead academic conducting an international study in corporations. It was a large project involving Chinese and UK academics. It was a wild experience and the work, I’m told, broke ground on considering these impacts and the results we get access to. Enough of me.
I look forward to your next piece.
I’d love to check it out! Send me a DM or link it here… whatever works :)
Thanks for this tender and thought provoking article Roc. I'm curious about something and would love your take. When we delve into consciousness enquiry via other people's work and model/maps, how significant is it if those we choose/find most sense making are crafted by all men or all women? For instance if I'm drawn to writers who are men or identify as these - what impacts might this have on "overall attitude on life, perception of reality and therefore current operational level of truth". Could we expand our ways of thinking by venturing out well beyond what makes sense into more via other writers/genders. I ask as enquiry.
Hey Danusia, thank you again for taking the time to read 🙏 I wasn't quite sure of your question and I did have a few thought trains running at the same time but think I understood the essence. Please let me know if this captured it, otherwise let me know. It was a very thought-provoking question in any case!
If someone has been brought up with a certain gender orientation, this would form a large and foundational layer of subconscious material for which then all that person’s experience would be filtered through. Of course this is only one “layer” and then there would be many more like: which country they grew up in, what their cultural background was like, what their religious background was like and so on.
I think there's always going to be the tendency to have subconscious biases when humans engage in any type of activity, based on many factors where gender orientation would be but one of them. But to what level of influence it would have specifically and in isolation? Who knows! It would likely also vary depending on the activity itself and how identified the person is with whatever subconscious layer is running in the background while engaging in the activity.
From my own experience I naturally encountered David’s work, and then the same happened with Scott 7 months later. I did notice that David’s work seemed to resonate with a lot of logical type/critical thinkers though (I’m an analyst/solution designer in tech) so I thought about it from that lens rather than purely gender orientation. Then I guess you could say do more men have a tendency to be that? Maybe?
On the other hand my partner has taken interest in this material as well, but maybe that’s because she has to hear me all the time 😂 I’m open to consuming information from anyone regardless of anything really (to the best of my conscious abilities). The next parts I will be writing about would be viewed to be more ‘feminine’ in nature (trauma therapy, somatic therapy, intuition, manifesting) in terms of its energy, so much of the info I’ve consumed over the years has come from women on these topics!
Was a pleasure to read your reflections on consciousness and mapping consciousness. I am very interested in meta-awareness and the liminal (this is literally the entire topic of my substack) and I have to be honest with you, I have trouble with this consciousness mapping.
These states of awareness are mapped hierarchically, as thought we climb up this ladder to enlightenment. Realistically, I don’t think any of these states exist in isolation; they are all interconnected, interrelated; they all have both light and dark; and really enlightenment, I don’t believe is a separate state, but something more like the Tao, where everything is included.
In a particular moment, something might have me responding with fear, something else with love, and something else with neutrality. We are multidimensional beings.
As Fernando Pessoa said, « I have more souls than one. »
Something like the eternal witness- seeing everything — witnessing all the other states as they pass through us — but not judging, not responding, just being — I think that ultimate state of observation and detachment is enlightenment - but how many of us reach that state and maintain it?
I’m rambling. Anyway, thank you for this food for thought. Very interesting to see this figure!
Allie! Lovely to encounter you, and so cool to see we’ve got overlap!
I think you’re spot on with your view/critique of the hierarchical nature of the map.
I see the map as a spectrum of different *potential* states of consciousness for the human experience. But each state that is 'higher' includes all preceding states. Consciousness expands, it doesn't discard.
I say potential, because like everything, this map is a limitation on our existence which is rooted in boundlessness. Is enlightenment really the pinnacle of the human consciousness experience, or is that just an embedded belief that’s running in the subconscious of humanity off the back of 1000s of years of existence?
It must be a limitation because as soon as an experience is described, coined, termed, structured, illustrated etc... the resolution drops. The essence (or some essence) is lost.
For me, it’s usefulness is mostly around seeing the fundamental model for the first time and being able to understand a lot of things I had felt inside unspoken in an instant. Past that initial exposure to expanded awareness, I think the limitation has to be dropped in order to progress.
Thank you for taking the time to read!
Roc - oh love what you said here, "consciousness expands, it doesn't discard." Mic drop!
Happy to have found your substack!
Could not agree more about how the transition from raw experience into translating that for sharing. That is fundamental to my motivation of understanding things. *That* space between. Words slice away at things -- concepts do, but my nature consciousness is embedded with them each time we interact with the world. Our brains start making patterns and creating meaning.
PS - post-structuralism has a lot to say about this -- Deleuze, Foucault, Guattari.
Well said Roc 🙌 there are so many people out there who don't even consider that their own reality is being influenced by external sources at such a level. I've been thinking about religion and what the core religions of the world were originally meant to be vs. what they actually are today. My current take is that we've moved further from "the source" with the implementation of so many rules and practices. They can be helpful at times, but also misleading. This one's still marinating for me... onto Part 3 in the meantime :)
A big realisation I had was it's no one's fault. The biggest limitation of structure we have is language and interpretation. Material that is "divinely inspired" as Alan Watts would call it, is felt, not spoken. Imagine how much resolution is lost once it filters through the experience of thought and perception and makes it all the way down into a published book... 🤯
Thank you for reading and commenting my man!
so true. that feeling is difficult to conceptualize, but is definitely felt.
Appreciate the shoutout brother. You do a great job articulating many complex ideas here
Thank you Scott. Encountering you + your work was pivotal for me. Appreciate you!