Future
New Horizons - Beyond Psychology
I’ve been delving into my psyche a little recently. It’s been a time of major adjustment for me of late. I’ve had the odd moments of uncertainty and doubt, but they have never persisted for that long. More often than not, those moments have been triggered by my past rather than my present. That happens too.
I wrote about synchronicity here a while ago. I still question synchronicity from time to time. I’m not sure I should since even in this time of change for me, wonderfully synchronous things happen all the time. The right person has that knack of turning up when I need them! Recently I’ve had the gift of another therapist talking to me from way across the pond. We’ve been chatting while I’ve been struggling through my bleaker moments. She has helped me no end in seeing that I struggle with those things that often she struggles with too, that my dilemmas not only relate to me, but that she has faced those same difficulties as well.
Last week we were talking about how we could describe a sense of our underlying connectedness, not only she and I, but all of us. I was grappling with that dimension of our lives in which synchronicity occurs.
I have been struggling with feelings and ideas about a new schematic for understanding how we exist in the world. Psychology spans only one dimension of our lives. It, along with all other single subject disciplines, fail to provide me with a framework through which I can make sense of our existence.
Suddenly I thought, “You’re not writing psychology at all, you’re writing philosophy with psychological overtones!” I love the idea of writing philosophy in a way, although I don’t like all philosophers. But hang on! I might be interested in a new humanistic active living philosophy, one that embraced the psyche too, of living, feeling and doing as well as simply thinking wise thoughts. The word philosophy is derived from the Greek “philo sophos” meaning a love of wisdom. I could buy into that, it might mean a whole body of beliefs that informed the way we are and acted in the world. Yes, I’ll take several large portions of that, please!
Somewhere deep down, I have a natural aversion to philosophy, all that old sterile hogwash about epistemology and ontology, of Popper versus Marx, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Kant. Who cares? But it does more readily lend itself to the overall consideration of the human condition.
So I started to ponder how one might set about approaching how we understand our lives.
I wrote to my friend, “I believe we might exist in three or four dimensions: Intellect or mind, intuition and emotions, a consciousness which is the body of "beliefs" (of which rational science is part) that upholds our way of living in the world that is infinitely changeable, and our universal interaction with nature of which our physical being is part. If I was a quantum physicist I might express all of these phenomena as variables that we might variously create, change or experience as different realities. If I were a quantum physicist and a metaphysicist, I would see all of these aspects of our being as being unified in some structural and spiritual way. I probably believe that too, but, as yet, I cannot explain it.
All that intuition is, is our own personal sense of knowing. I believe that we know or can know far more than we are frequently aware. Also I believe that most of us are more unconscious than conscious, that is to say, we are more influenced by our unconscious minds in seeing our personal reality as something that exists outside ourselves. There are all manner of things that emerge from the unconscious that I simply cannot explain...like those we are attracted to…”
She wrote back to me, “I also believe that there is another realm of awareness...that which I refer to (as many do) as universal consciousness. Is this what you mean by nature and environment? I am asking, because sometimes we connect in same thought-patterns with others that may live across the world...and, it can happen quite unexpectedly, and with very little prelude.”
She and me might be the perfect examples of what she is speaking about!
The “universal consciousness” idea worries me too.
I replied, “I wondered about the notion of our universal connectedness and where it fitted in or even what it was.
I'm not even sure I believe in it outside our physical being... I am a little concerned about creating a new metaphysical reality that may become to be regarded as god. But I do think there may be more...perhaps we need to fully comprehend our own consciousness first.
I'm reluctant to fall into the realms that may be construed as religious or other worldly and I'm very nervous of this whole phenomenon which has been the springboard everywhere for religions, cults and that which cannot be comprehended. Love to know your feelings here.
That was a big "Don’t know”. “
We share our concerns. Her reply was “I don't know either. There is something I cannot explain, but I have no idea. I do understand the concern you state about religion. It concerns me as well.”
I’m stuck at this juncture. I’ll have to ponder more on this point. I keep dipping in and out of the physical sciences to try and formulate an understanding of what this phenomenon might be. But I don’t want to go there, since inevitably that will take me towards the dogma of rational science, systems theory and mathematics. It’s not that I am opposed to rational science, but that it too is simply one part of our predominantly western collective consciousness. It too is a manufactured body of knowledge that changes in accordance with the beliefs within scientific communities, and our experience of being in the world.
Rather than imbue nature with some metaphysical quality. Perhaps I shall locate this phenomenon within consciousness, as a dimension of consciousness we have yet to understand.
I’ll finish with a few words about consciousness that I wrote in my farrago blog (Back to the Future - Part 2, Tag - "Future") last year, when I decided to revisit this subject:
“It is shifts in consciousness, not technology, consumption, money markets or any aspect of our physical environment or social, political and economic systems that causes change. Back in 1962, when Kuhn wrote about "paradigm shifts", he talked about scientific revolutions occurring when a body of beliefs, what we are calling consciousness, could no longer uphold the reality they created.
There are conflicting realities in science too that co-exist, and one may overturn, or embrace one or the other, or synthesise them in a new form of consciousness.
It is consciousness that governs our perceptions of the world that in turn creates our realities. How and what we perceive is our reality, to that extent a philosopher might say that truth is relative. I am not that sure that discussions of absolute or relative truth are that helpful in a world that is governed by consciousness and our perceptions of that world.”
Special acknowledgement
A million thanks to my good friend, Tamera Daun, for her enormous help and wisdom in considering what I have written about here, and for her permission to convey parts of our conversations in this post.
Footnote
Last night, when I sat down to write this I had intended to write a piece about self-esteem! I have been thinking about that too of late. This piece flowed out and was almost written by an accident I can’t explain.
I wrote about synchronicity here a while ago. I still question synchronicity from time to time. I’m not sure I should since even in this time of change for me, wonderfully synchronous things happen all the time. The right person has that knack of turning up when I need them! Recently I’ve had the gift of another therapist talking to me from way across the pond. We’ve been chatting while I’ve been struggling through my bleaker moments. She has helped me no end in seeing that I struggle with those things that often she struggles with too, that my dilemmas not only relate to me, but that she has faced those same difficulties as well.
Last week we were talking about how we could describe a sense of our underlying connectedness, not only she and I, but all of us. I was grappling with that dimension of our lives in which synchronicity occurs.
I have been struggling with feelings and ideas about a new schematic for understanding how we exist in the world. Psychology spans only one dimension of our lives. It, along with all other single subject disciplines, fail to provide me with a framework through which I can make sense of our existence.
Suddenly I thought, “You’re not writing psychology at all, you’re writing philosophy with psychological overtones!” I love the idea of writing philosophy in a way, although I don’t like all philosophers. But hang on! I might be interested in a new humanistic active living philosophy, one that embraced the psyche too, of living, feeling and doing as well as simply thinking wise thoughts. The word philosophy is derived from the Greek “philo sophos” meaning a love of wisdom. I could buy into that, it might mean a whole body of beliefs that informed the way we are and acted in the world. Yes, I’ll take several large portions of that, please!
Somewhere deep down, I have a natural aversion to philosophy, all that old sterile hogwash about epistemology and ontology, of Popper versus Marx, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Kant. Who cares? But it does more readily lend itself to the overall consideration of the human condition.
So I started to ponder how one might set about approaching how we understand our lives.
I wrote to my friend, “I believe we might exist in three or four dimensions: Intellect or mind, intuition and emotions, a consciousness which is the body of "beliefs" (of which rational science is part) that upholds our way of living in the world that is infinitely changeable, and our universal interaction with nature of which our physical being is part. If I was a quantum physicist I might express all of these phenomena as variables that we might variously create, change or experience as different realities. If I were a quantum physicist and a metaphysicist, I would see all of these aspects of our being as being unified in some structural and spiritual way. I probably believe that too, but, as yet, I cannot explain it.
All that intuition is, is our own personal sense of knowing. I believe that we know or can know far more than we are frequently aware. Also I believe that most of us are more unconscious than conscious, that is to say, we are more influenced by our unconscious minds in seeing our personal reality as something that exists outside ourselves. There are all manner of things that emerge from the unconscious that I simply cannot explain...like those we are attracted to…”
She wrote back to me, “I also believe that there is another realm of awareness...that which I refer to (as many do) as universal consciousness. Is this what you mean by nature and environment? I am asking, because sometimes we connect in same thought-patterns with others that may live across the world...and, it can happen quite unexpectedly, and with very little prelude.”
She and me might be the perfect examples of what she is speaking about!
The “universal consciousness” idea worries me too.
I replied, “I wondered about the notion of our universal connectedness and where it fitted in or even what it was.
I'm not even sure I believe in it outside our physical being... I am a little concerned about creating a new metaphysical reality that may become to be regarded as god. But I do think there may be more...perhaps we need to fully comprehend our own consciousness first.
I'm reluctant to fall into the realms that may be construed as religious or other worldly and I'm very nervous of this whole phenomenon which has been the springboard everywhere for religions, cults and that which cannot be comprehended. Love to know your feelings here.
That was a big "Don’t know”. “
We share our concerns. Her reply was “I don't know either. There is something I cannot explain, but I have no idea. I do understand the concern you state about religion. It concerns me as well.”
I’m stuck at this juncture. I’ll have to ponder more on this point. I keep dipping in and out of the physical sciences to try and formulate an understanding of what this phenomenon might be. But I don’t want to go there, since inevitably that will take me towards the dogma of rational science, systems theory and mathematics. It’s not that I am opposed to rational science, but that it too is simply one part of our predominantly western collective consciousness. It too is a manufactured body of knowledge that changes in accordance with the beliefs within scientific communities, and our experience of being in the world.
Rather than imbue nature with some metaphysical quality. Perhaps I shall locate this phenomenon within consciousness, as a dimension of consciousness we have yet to understand.
I’ll finish with a few words about consciousness that I wrote in my farrago blog (Back to the Future - Part 2, Tag - "Future") last year, when I decided to revisit this subject:
“It is shifts in consciousness, not technology, consumption, money markets or any aspect of our physical environment or social, political and economic systems that causes change. Back in 1962, when Kuhn wrote about "paradigm shifts", he talked about scientific revolutions occurring when a body of beliefs, what we are calling consciousness, could no longer uphold the reality they created.
There are conflicting realities in science too that co-exist, and one may overturn, or embrace one or the other, or synthesise them in a new form of consciousness.
It is consciousness that governs our perceptions of the world that in turn creates our realities. How and what we perceive is our reality, to that extent a philosopher might say that truth is relative. I am not that sure that discussions of absolute or relative truth are that helpful in a world that is governed by consciousness and our perceptions of that world.”
Special acknowledgement
A million thanks to my good friend, Tamera Daun, for her enormous help and wisdom in considering what I have written about here, and for her permission to convey parts of our conversations in this post.
Footnote
Last night, when I sat down to write this I had intended to write a piece about self-esteem! I have been thinking about that too of late. This piece flowed out and was almost written by an accident I can’t explain.
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