Hey everyone, no headache today, think I was just exhausted.Just did a Yoga class with a good friend, hurt like hell, but feel very peaceful now.Enjoying a bullet proof coffee with ghee, lucky me :)
So when I started this I was thinking that emotion is this energy that jumps between people and changes their stress level. It is in a way, but what I failed to get is that we have a lot of responsibility for how we both receive and emanate.
We used the ice-berg floating in water metaphor earlier - if the berg is small, it may flow in time to the waves. If it is bigger there will be a lag and the waves will crash into it, creating turbulence (no Bob joke this time).
If you were standing on that ice-berg, you would be receiving data about the wave - its power, its height and depth, how frequently it was waving to you. You would notice a rhythm very much like music and everything would be just swell ha ha. (I kill me)
(Oh, I have not checked CoinMarketCap yet, hang on....ok I am still solvent phew!)
So you see block of ice, block-folio, little triggers that I am personally attached to, grab my attention and break my flow... and so it goes.
So back to the ice, I am standing on the ice, feeling swell.
Feeling my environment and accepting the situation.
I can keep my balance even when the swell picks up.
So long as I allow my hips to sway freely, absorbing the motion, my head will stay on center and I wont fall over.
If my body tenses. When the next wave comes, it will lift first one leg then the other. If my hips can no longer move freely, the force will transfer up through them, pushing my head to one side. My body will follow my head and I will end up in the drink, where did that tension come from, what do you think?
The skilled sportsman, in this case a surfer, can absorb or create force without falling, or stalling, without flailing and failing. By remaining sensitive to what is happening, we can play with the rhythm without discordance. If our leaders could disco dance, we would not resort to ordinance? (Truly sorry, but they can rarely dance and neither can I)
So where were we. Oh yeah, skilled movement is a kind of graceful body memory.
Now thinking is not always the bad guy.
Fact is we do have choices and in our head we can play out the moves,
Dependent on our experience we can allocate resources efficiently.
Dependent on our understanding we can maintain sufficiency.
In this world in which we find our bad selves
It’s not all roses and densely packed shelves.
In some areas there is abundance, even redundancy
In others, a desert, poisoned river, overfished sea
Not here to complain, just to understand
Is it possible to live in a more abundant land.
Yes of course it is, so long as people can agree
On how to behave and act wisely
We are learning all the time and everyone is good at something
Each of us is both uniquely sensitive and interested in certain aspects of reality.
Which is why we work so well in groups, we outperformed every other species despite our frailties.
Our strength can also be our weakness. We turn to each other incessantly, reading each other’s gestures, words and tone. More so when threatened. We check in constantly for feedback on our behavior and we look for fresh clues on what do next.
We have rich data from our senses, and we have bodies and heads full of experience to draw upon. What could possibly go wrong?
Memory created and stored by direct experience is both rich and updatable, as new experience is added it either joins or over-rides the old pattern. Coming to form a tapestry that matches reality like a head up display - we can still see through it.
Memory created and stored by stories is not necessarily like this. The difference is the quality of the emotion experienced at the time we are exposed to them.
If we are bitten by a snake we learn to be real careful in their habitat. If we see our mothers freak out in the presence of a snake, we learn from the intensity of their emotion, we actually resonate with them and experience their emotion. To the cells in our bodies, doused in adrenaline, we have a fear experience and it sticks.
When we are told stories that create a strong emotional reaction, the emotion brings a physical reaction that our bodies feel just like it actually happened. We store them as “experienced” - we believe them. When triggered we respond with emotion which also jumps from person to person, just as its meant to.
Now our rational minds are watching over all this, judging weather to accept this story, and we can stay detached..until...
Until we take the story personally.
Now a great story teller will always try to get us to relate to or see ourselves in the characters they use. They will dial the emotions up, and get you to vividly put yourself into their situation. Why, because they want you to FEEL as though your having the experience. The more we resonate, the more moved we are, the more we will come to trust what we are hearing, after all, we now have also experienced it no?
This is conditioning, and I no longer blame the story tellers.
For if I did not take it personally it would never have stuck.
The reason we take things personally is because we want to.
We see some advantage to be gained or tragedy to be avoided.
Good traders are wise to emotion, they use the term FOMO - fear of missing out.
Notice they don’t say desire to have?
Well this is getting long and I still have not reached the critical point, so it looks like there will be a part 5 - hope your still with me and feeling alive?
=8-P