This week I feel like I had a breakthrough with my independent studies as I met with Gail at Fertile Ground and discussed my direction moving forward with my internship.

This image shows a new organization of the depictions I have been creating for the last few quarters to show how to be. Last week I was hoping to organize some ideas that were inspired from Shepherd’s book on neurogastronomy. The dotted lines running through the stacked boxes and the number 4 and the number 5 separated from the infinity symbol attempt to show the tunnel vision of focus on a desired way of being. The flower in the middle shows the potential growth and how your being might create a buzz is shown above the middle circle.

Let’s begin with the stacked boxes on the left.

As described in the week two post, this depiction created by Dr. Alan Watkins shows how we physiologically sustain thinking and our actions to accomplish a desired task which is reflected in our behavior. How we go about sustaining our physiology depends on how we sustain our emotions . 

beyond ourselves. This picture above represents the 4 in the original image. The following picture describes the pitfalls of an extended moral centrality and reliance upon a group for reinforcement of behavior, rather than using the ability to reflect in what that behavior actually does for others amongst that shared group. When a person reflections upon their actions amongst a group after being with them, not as a form of reinforcement, it contributes to that person’s sense of being and allows for a person to expand on how their behavior exists beyond themselves. Not until the past few days have I realized how rewarding cooking with other people can be when the recipes hold complexity that would not be enjoyable to attempt individually. The ability to exist beyond the sense of self in effort to sustain other’s physiological self and providing emotional support for the words unspoken by sharing a space has become internalized as powerful mode of social resilience.

Now that we have looked at how physiology, moral centrality, and integrity exist in our way of being it is importance to look at how that may change over time. 

This image represents the the number 5 in the space between the circle with the infinity loop and the growth that leads to our being. The difference between the first physiology image and this one is that there are lines to represent whatever added bullshit we have that prevents us from truly being happy and existing in a sustainable joyous way that benefits others beyond our immediate selves. This section describes the fear in our human attempt to bend backwards to correct for a cultural malformation that has impacted us all in varying ways, and our different perceptions of how it has affected us can be celebrated in sharing the enjoyment of sustaining positive emotion as described in 4 through cooking, music, theater, or any form of creative expression that nourishes the emotion of performers and viewers. Emotion exists in our subconscious as a representation of the physiological signals that are getting sent to the brain that can only be processed through feeling. If I have created an intuitive crutch, for example a set of jokes that turn an unprocessed aspect of my life into immediate comedic relief, I am able to trick myself that that quirk could not use some attention to live a happy, more complete life

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This lopsided depiction of The Adaptive Cycle that describes human and environmental interaction over time is a helpful tool to show how the use of the intuitive crutch can trick the mind.

There is a quote from Michel Foucault’s The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical perception that describes the deceit of the rational thinking of the human brain, “Death left its old tragic heaven and became the lyrical core of man: his invisible truth, his visible secret.”

After reading the assigned portion of The Lives of Animals did I uncover the rational mode of thinking is synonymous to my idea of the intuitive crutch. It can be used to process emotion through creativity, but relies upon the logic of a shared environment and not until a new perception of the immediate environment is created can other environment’s logic be used to sustain a healthier, more conscious way of thinking.

As described in my notes between winter and spring quarter, with no idea of the context,

“The intuitive crutch can be unknowingly used by tactful or incidental decreased conscious awareness of behavior in effort to seek acknowledgement for suffering, which means increased conscious awareness and connection with the intuitive self is essential, how?”

If the conscious self can learn and develop behaviors to preserve the emotional integrity of the intuitive self through controlling for the wildcard rational way of thinking, then being is revealed to the conscious self as incredibly simple, and eventually it won’t need constant reflection. The box on the far left represents how we can sustain our physiology in an emotionally sustainable way that rewards ourselves and connects us with others through forms such as cooking, music, and theater while the infinity symbol on the right shows how intentional breathing and meditation can lead to more integrated forms of self preservation through qi gong breathing and integral consciousness training. Distress can be composted, grown, and harvested to sustain the farmer through dance – a celebration – of peaceful relations between the mind and body set the tune of music, rhythm, and release – and when the sense of self is developed, it can be tested, and challenged through tactful invitations of perceived danger through any meaningful way to the individual, for me, I have noticed there’s some beauty in the traditions of martial arts and chess.