Between absurdity and mystery

To re-organise life, having let go of an unhelpful way of organising chaos, there are basically three ways in which to explore focusing your attention on new possibilities:

You can look at physical aspects of life (such as body-fitness, home-making, gardening, cooking, crafts, and so on.)

You can look at psychological aspects of life (such as learning new subjects or skills, changing habits, altering your priorities, developing relaxation-prayer-meditation, and so on.)

You can look at social aspects of life (such as choosing to spend more time with certain people, joining clubs or societies, resolving difficulties with some people, commiting time to charitable activity with others, and so on.)

Each of these can be pushed and explored to an extreme, where they are no longer satisfying something in your inmost being. There is a longing in most people for inner integration balanced with a sense of true belonging with other people. So having pushed any area of exploration to a limit of absurdity, for example, physcial body-building, the time  comes to re-integrate what you have discovered with the way life looks from the other two perspectives, in this example the mental and social aspects.

THAT PROCESS OF RE-INTEGRATION CAN LEAD once again TO EMOTIONAL CHAOS! Certain things may not fit! Choices and priorities need to be re-made, relationships re-valued, other physical aspects of life re-assessed. The resulting mixture of ideas, values and relationsips is UNPREDICTABLE, but it might be good! There is a certain MYSTERY about what may emerge from this re-integration. It is true personal development. It is, in the terms of Emotional Chaos Theory, the spiritual dimension to personal life.

There is no need to postulate a non-material life force. That is not what is meant by 'spirit' in Emotional Logic or Emotional Chaos Theory. I'll write more on this later. The point to be made here is this: Suspended somewhere between mystery and absurdity, we each are trying to make sense of our lived experience, and that process of making sense is deeply emotional becuase emotion is our personal energy on the move to make adjustments in life.

E-motion = energy in motion.

In emotional Chaos Theory terms, personal energy emerges within, not from some external impersonal force, but rather by joining-into organised patterns of living. It is synergy.

Safely re-engaging with chaos when stuck in a blind alley

Most people don't like living in chaos, but they may get stuck with a habit of organising it. The fear of more chaos makes us put up with difficult or unpleasant situations.

So... the toolkit and mental structure of Emotional Logic provide the insights and understanding needed to help people slip safely back towards chaos, and to float around a bit there with less distress and more unpredictability while waiting for some fresh feedback to re-order life in a new way. 

It's like the stage before life-coaching. It gets people to map the chaos and unhelpful simplifications that have trapped them. Then the goal-setting becomes more realistic, and the feedback within unpredictable situations becomes more constructive. 

Adjusting to change

When adjusting to changing life circumstances, we often do not recognise how much we need to let go of in order to move on to the new. We may not adequately count the cost in advance.

These 'hidden losses' generate loss emotions even if the losses remain un-named. These emotional 'states of preparation', which protect us when faced with potential loss, may break into our overly-hopeful picture of the future, as if from somewhere indefinably deep, or as if slapping us on the back of the head like a 'wake-up' call. We end up criticising ourselves for having these emotions, such as anger and guilty feelings, because they may appear as if from nowhere. They make us believe there must be something wrong with us, generating negative self-beliefs such as, I'm dangerous, weak, useless, bad, going-mad, and so on.

But in fact all of our loss-related emotions are there for a survival purpose, as our energy on the move to make different sorts of adjustments to our changing circumstances. That's Emotional Logic. The process of adjustment is logical. It's also an emotional process, because emotion is your energy on the move to enable you to do what is necessary to re-connect. E-motion = energy in motion.

That's the useful purpose of grief. Loss-induced emotions move us to re-connect with others when change disrupts our existing connections through separation, brokenness or misunderstanding.

Negative self-beliefs, arising out of unrecognised grieving, mis-inform our sense of identity. Out of negative self-beliefs emerge our very thoughts. Curiously late in the process, these thoughts and day-dreams often seem to justify (in retrospect) our knee-jerk behavioural reactions.

In that time-delay, in the shadow, our false sense of identity nestles down to conceal its naked error from those who would love us - love us even with our grief.

So, much of our sense of identity, emerging as it does from emotional chaos, is partial adjustment. It is 'suspended not adjusting' in all the change going on around us, out of which, moment-by-moment, we are continuously forming.

It is resistance. It is rebellion.

Catch-up, and overview

Hey, sorry about the long gap. Holidays, and then preparing for a trade stand created... unpredictability.

I plan to steadily build a model of personal development, showing how the sense of being a person self-organises out of chaotic experiences - at least when it works well with adequate feedback. But, the more I plan to do that, the more unexpected obstacles arise to my time. And then I get frustrated by the waiting...

To my surprise I have found that emotional experience is far more important for self-belief and the negative thoughts that arise out of those beliefs than is currently being given credit for in the psychological professional circles. I come from a medical background - biochemistry, physiology, social inter-action, stress and tension - you know, the sorts of things that underlye illness and health. I think of human beings as dust that has an amazing capacity to understand and consciously relate to other shifting piles of dust.

Sometimes, you stick a bandage on a pile of dust, and it self-heals. Sometimes you need to inspire it, if it is self-heal. Both methods are relational, not just physical.

It's amazing stuff, dust. It speaks, if you can see what I'm getting at. Or, is it the pattern of organisation that speaks?

That's where this is going next. We need to look at 'patterns', and entanglements if we are to see where self-beliefs arise.

I'll get back to this shortly, if there are any gaps in the throng of people I dream will gather at our trade stand for 'The Emotional Logic Centre'.