Desirable states
1. Euphoria
2. Flow
3. Choiceless
awareness
Choiceless Awareness is the most basic positive state. It comes about when you can take in life
without judgment, without self-centered thinking, including ambition and
greed. It is brought about by the act of
seeing and feeling ‘what is’ and understanding it without also the desire to
change it. It is not a difficult state
to discover, but as drives and desires and greed set in, it may be difficult to
maintain. It is important when such
focus is lost, to simply see how it was lost and in that process regain
it. There is nothing mysterious about
it. It simply means, empty your feeling
consciousness of self-centeredness, greed, ambition, the past, and the future
and focusing on the moment without judgment.
From this state it is possible to use past knowledge and planning to
accomplish something that needs to be done, but it is poisoned when you become
attached to the things that need to be done with your self-centered feeling and thinking. Choiceless awareness is for now, not the
future. So observe with all of your
intensity, what is happening now, with no desire or attempt to escape it.
“Flow is the mental
state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully
immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in
the process of the activity. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the positive psychology concept has been
widely referenced across a variety of fields.”[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
) Flow is hypothesized to occur during a
particular set of circumstances which can be explored at the preceding
link. In the current conceptual
framework, it fits in as a state containing but slightly above choiceless
awareness as it adds the value of engaging in meaningful activity and a sense
of euphoria.
Euphoria is a transcendent experience of happiness and positive
affect. It is sometimes but rarely
experienced during routine life. It can
be a side effect of certain drugs or even diseases. In our conceptual framework, it is not a
goal, especially considering the ill effects of some euphoric drugs or euphoric
states like mania, it is simply a positive state that may come and go as a
result of our activities and can be seen as the height of affective
experiences. It is also possible for
euphoric states to be engineered to weed out harmful effects and improve
positive effects and this is a worthy goal.
The Negative Thinking Process
Undesirable states
1. Conflict
2. Will
3. Fragmentation
In the negative thought-process, there is a cycle of conflict,
will to change, and disassociation and fragmentation, within the same
individual or among an interacting group of individuals. The content of the conflict is often in the
past or an imagined future. For example,
one feels overweight and this leads to a conflict with the self that has split,
fragmented from the reality of one’s weight such that one’s weight becomes
something external, then will comes in and promises change but in effect just
produces a lot of negative emotion.
While losing weight might be a worthy goal, the cycle of conflict, will,
and fragmentation not only causes one to feel awful, but decreases the chances
of a successful and safe weight loss.
Life, i. e. living, is to be totally observant in the moment
such that there is not room for the self to fragment from consciousness and
dream up phantom fears for us. In the
state of choiceless awareness we are able to be aware of and take on what is happening
now in reality and respond appropriately rather than being caught up in
intricate plots of doom and gloom we have dreamt up for ourselves.
Thanks for reading,
DF Seldon
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