posted
Because we live in a chaotic world with a chaotic brain, we need something to align ourselves with to dampen that effect, a sort of attractor.
quote: A useful insight into the possibilities here can be gained by considering the concept of basins of attraction. Let us start by thinking of a bowl containing a ball bearing. This will move around the bowl until eventually it comes to rest at the lowest point. We can say that it is 'attracted' to that point, so each part of the bowl can be regarded as leading to that stationary point, and the whole bowl is what we call the basin of attraction of that system. If we place the ball bearing outside the bowl then it will have a tendency to go somewhere else, so we can see that an attractor is only effective within a certain area of space, and we can have many different attractors adjoining each other.
If we look at our lives (particularly if we aren't satisfied with them) we might see that, despite our seemingly best efforts, we stay in much the same place. We can try to change our attitudes about being in that place, and this can indeed help, but the deep desire is to escape this place and this desire may not simply signify wanting to escape one's self, per se, but escaping what we commonly refer to as a "rut", and perhaps with good reason is it called a rut.
quote: Navigating Attractors Let us now take a golf putting green. Imagine a player trying to get the ball in the hole. The hole is an attractor too. But it will only work as such if the ball gets close enough to the rim. Before we get there we have to negotiate the surface between the player and the hole and that has many other local attractors and barriers (little holes, ridges etc.). Each ridge is a point of decision, the ball can fall to one side or the other, which path it takes is extremely dependant on initial conditions. A very minor change can switch the path from one attractor - the hole, to a nearby one - missed ! Once this bifurcation point has been passed it may take a very large perturbation (a hidden stone say) to switch attractors again, we say the system has become 'locked' into a particular attractor.
Perhaps its no wonder we are "pestered" by internal dialogue and by the many strange and screwy things we find ourselves doing. We later may scratch our head and think "I can't believe I did that! That was so unlike me." And yet we may have some deep sense that our lives, much like a game of pinball, needs to be jarred just a bit, "tilted", to get that ball rolling on the right track. One wonders why this works sometimes but not other times (or rarely at all). Should we just follow our "attractor" to its natural conclusion? Do we have to before a new path opens to us? Is this what we call hitting "rock bottom", the bottom of our attractor basin?
quote:Attractor Landscapes Can we apply these ideas to people issues ? Indeed we can, we are all familiar with decisions that once made are difficult to reverse, and also perhaps with the feeling that we are being drawn into a situation against our will. Consider life then as a complex landscape full of hills and valleys. We try to navigate from attractor to attractor, using energy to climb to the top of a nearby hill - changing state, so that we can reach a better valley, a new (hopefully more rewarding) steady state - or attractor. There seems to be only one problem. We can see neither the hills nor the valleys and don't know if we are getting higher or lower on our personal quest. So how is this landscape structured?
Indeed? How is the landscape structured? Is it a Trinitarian universe? A Taoist one? Buddhist? Islamic? Jewish? Atheist? We surely may go from one to the other (or borrow ideas from them) in search of some landscape that helps us find those hills and valleys so that we can naviagate our lives. We somehow sense that just randomly plucking away at it doesn't work, although it is surely healthy to go through periods where we try many things, many new ideas, to try to get a sense of reality, a sense of where our lives should go. Thus it might be quite natural and healthy for someone raised in whatever ideology or religion to leave that ideology or religion, if only for a time, in order to gain some perspective and to be able to leave any unhealthy ruts. The Baptist Church might, say, be perfect for one type of individual but nor for another. We often thing (correctly) that a change of job is just what the doctor ordered…sometimes even a change of spouse. Other times these type of changes are only superficial and do not set us on some better course and out of old ruts.
quote: If our computer has, say, a tendency to make the screen go blank then every trajectory will eventually end up at the same point, that single state space point corresponding to a totally blank screen, in other words a 'Point' attractor. If instead the screen cycles between several states in a regular fashion we will have a loop in state space - a 'Periodic' attractor, and if a random pattern appears we may have more exotic trajectories in state space - perhaps 'Strange' or 'Ergodic' attractors. We can have order in state space even if normal space appears chaotic.
Interesting. If one views one's life on a sort of larger scale (five year increments?), one might notice cycles of change, stagnation, change, etc. We feel like we're moving and making real progress but it's just the same old cycle, in a new skin.
quote: Yes and no. We are assuming as yet that the peaks are fixed, that they never change. That is rarely the case for reasons we will discuss next, but nature has another solution here - sex ! Mating effectively shuffles the parameters, we are shifted across the landscape to a new point at random, a leap rather than a crawl. If a higher peak is nearby, this crossover (or recombination) can jump across the valley and establish a beachhead on the new hill. We can then 'hill climb' that peak subsequently towards a better future. We may of course land in the bottom of an even lower valley, most do and die out - failed experiments. Nature can be cruel...
Perhaps the attractions of sex are more than just feeling good, more than just an ego or self-esteem boost. I suspect this is so. I suspect on some deeper level we're trying to "climb a hill" or cross over to another one. That may explain any number of odd things that we do.
"Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence." -- Abigail Adams, Letter to John Quincy Adams, May 8, 1780
Therefore to make significant changes in our lives we have to want to make significant changes in our lives. The will might be the one thing that allows us to chart a ew course. But the will might be different than simply acting out willfully. I don't know. But I suspect that we need to be very in touch with our true feelings and beliefs or else we're prone to simply fooling ourselves, apparently going through the motions of change in order to satisfy our sense of need, but not really implementing change which satisfies our fear of change. Our true will and desire is not what it should be. It's what it is. But once having found it there is then at least the chance of moving to the next stage which is the pursuit of knowledge. Learning would seem to be key to breaking into new states, new paradigm, to be put on the course toward new attractors and away from old ones, to achieve new, hopefully better, states of equilibrium.
A few random thoughts and questions: Is God the ultimate attractor? Are we trying to jump to different attractor basins via the use of drugs and alcohol (or other addiction)?
Might acceptance be a way to settle into our basins so that we can either complete that stage (while acknowledging that "complete" may be to stay in that stage) and thus enabling move onto the next? The expectations of other people can make change difficult because they help keep us in the "basin" we are in now.
Nutty peace activists could be said to be acting instinctively, trying to pull the world out of the "attractor" of war (although the inherent aggressiveness and violence in themselves and their tactics defeats this end).
quote:There is something obscure which is complete before heaven and earth arose; tranquil, quiet, standing alone without change, moving around without peril. It could be the Mother of everything, I don't know its name, and call it Tao. -- Tao Te Ching
Are Zen and Taoist notions analogous to "quantum tunneling", getting out of traps that conventional methods could never surmount? Is that what prayer is as well?
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posted
The good news is that if nothing makes sense then we're all in pretty good shape. No use wasting mental energy on looking for purpose. Acceptance is easier because life becomes perhaps nothing more than having been dealt a bad hand. We don't generally get mad when a twig falls from a tree and hits us on the head. There is no one to blame. But if someone hits us over the head with a stick then we are surely to get angry because this is an event that could have and should have been avoided. Thus our lives, with a belief in God, are potentially made harder to resolve, not easier. Why would an all-loving being allow so many sticks to whack us in the head?
And yet our belief in purpose and meaning is more than just the desire to maintain some sort of psychological escape hatch for our lives, a way to maintain hope that our lives might improve so that we can at least endure the present. Surely that may not be an inconsequential factor at times in any life, and may be the overall orientation for some (maybe most), but existence itself begs an answer and it would be a convenient lie to oneself to deny the question simply because a scientific answer is not likely forthcoming. That simply the other side of the hope coin.
But it surely seems that things do makes sense in this world and this fact therefore can put enormous pressure on us. If there are problems then there must be answers. If things are going good we may be thankful, but if things are not going good then we can deduce how we may have fallen off-purpose or perhaps not yet found it. Or getting into the real nitty gritty of living, perhaps we will have to come to terms with some kind of purpose in which we are but near-powerless pawns seemingly created to suffer and not much more, although I tend to reject such an idea as futile if not outright defeatist. If we struggle at all it is because we have not accepted pointless suffering as a premise for our lives, even if we have yet to divine our purpose. But surely we suppose if there is purpose that, due to the presence of love (which is self-evidently higher and more desirable than many, if not most, other purposes or factors), when we are on-purpose in our own lives we will achieve a measure of gratification and peace.
Even if one divines that one's purpose is salvation and heaven, it's likely that there is still enough involved in day-to-day living that, perhaps except for saints, finding meaning for the various day-to-day events in our lives is a must. So we are left looking for codes, clues, and cues in the world around us as well as in our internal world of thoughts, feelings, and the mystical. And we will likely not stop looking until we find some kind of internal resonance with something. Parts of chaos theory resonate with me and it seems appropriate that it should because much of our world is organized in this way and it seems likely our brains are as well.
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A common experience during kundalini awakening is an increased desire for union, which is not only sexual in the obvious way, but in terms of psychic elements that have been polarized through trauma and intrude into awareness. Before k is aroused, or before there is a fairly visceral sense of mystical union (which usually stirs the former), sex is indeed a mystery confined to speculations about the survival of the species and to notions of creativity hidden in chaos.
The quote from the Tao Te Ching you posted suggests the immanent presence of God, which roots the soul in something spacious enough to allow exiled parts of the self to re-emerge, re-organize and reconnect.
My bias, of course, which is clear on the thread "Healing the False Self," is that these questions remain continually abstract, or elusive, until a substantial, intimate relationship is engaged, either in marriage or with a therapist who can tolerate the exiled parts re-appearing, and knows how to encourage the client's capacity to keep them company so that true self awareness can be increasingly differentiated. This means that one can not only watch these powerful energies come into awareness, but begin dialoguing with them, listening to them so they can begin to trust, again, the true self's capacity to hold a space for them. Then their adversarial relationship with each other can dissolve and they can serve to awaken the heart rather than maintain its contraction.
Ann Cornell's book "The Power of Focusing" is a simple, short way to experience how this is possible, where the emotions we fear actually have the most treasure. And the book "Internal Family Systems Therapy" by Richard Schwartz is turning out to be a minor revelation for me re: the relationship between the exiled parts and the true self.
So as for ruts, I'd suggest that these are often driven by exiled parts trying to protect the true self. This is Schwartz' insight, and I agree. He's saying that in early childhood the true self awareness, which we see in children via their wonder, open-heartedness, intuition, etc., is basically the first to go into exile when the family is severely dysfunctional, since the child cannot tolerate a degree of awareness that threatens the family's agreements.
posted
I must confess that I've never really understood chaos theory and don't know how much traction it has among physicists and metaphysicians, so relating the Christian message to chaos theory is not an area where I have much to offer.
However: A few random thoughts and questions: Is God the ultimate attractor? Are we trying to jump to different attractor basins via the use of drugs and alcohol (or other addiction)?
I would say "yes" and "yes."
However: Even if one divines that one's purpose is salvation and heaven, it's likely that there is still enough involved in day-to-day living that, perhaps except for saints, finding meaning for the various day-to-day events in our lives is a must. So we are left looking for codes, clues, and cues in the world around us as well as in our internal world of thoughts, feelings, and the mystical. And we will likely not stop looking until we find some kind of internal resonance with something.
That's true enough, but I don't think it's necessary to find meaning for the "various day-to-day events in our lives." A meta-value or paradigm automatically confers meaning on everything, so one doesn't need to search among the nitty-gritty to divine additional meaning. E.g., within the framework of parenting, one doesn't inquire if there's meaning in changing diapers and preparing meals; parenting children confers meaning on those tasks. Same sort of thing goes for those who have Christian faith and know themselves to be co-creators with God and co-redeemers with Christ. This meta-value sheds light on all that one does.
The need for a meta-value system of some kind does seem to be a desire all human beings have. That's how I see it, at least.
[ October 22, 2005, 04:18 PM: Message edited by: Phil ]
-------------------- "The Light shines on in darkness . . ." - John 1: 3 - Posts: 7539 | From: Wichita, KS | Registered: Aug 2001
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Phil humilitously (I'm going to make up a new word here) said: I must confess that I've never really understood chaos theory and don't know how much traction it has among physicists and metaphysicians, so relating the Christian message to chaos theory is not an area where I have much to offer.
Hey, do like I do and just call it brainstorming. (Good movie, by the way.) You might call my way of thinking throwing stuff on the wall and seeing what sticks…and that would be because that's exactly what I’m doing. But I’m pretty sure chaos theory is pretty well accepted as a science (a lot of that computer animation we see is in movies of made of fractals, and programs designed to generate them, which is a major element of chaos theory.). I'm simply extending it a bit into philosophy…and possibly finding emotion and human patterns of behavior that might exhibit characteristics of chaos theory as I briefly and superficially understand it.
In my case I feel there's a good analogy been chaos theory's attractors and what we might call our core woundedness. For instance, we might have a core belief that we're not worthy or that we're not deserving of the same things as other people. One might wonder just how these persistent wounds (and their persistence, especially in me, is what attracts me to the idea of attractors) manifest themselves in the brain and/or spirit. We might try and try, and even make great strides (I gave up drinking a long time ago, and have dealt with a good deal of my anger), and yet we still seem to be in orbit of some of the same, persistent ideas which produce the same, persistent behaviors.
Surely the mental health game is one of paradigms. Even if it was all that was needed, few think in terms of rewiring their brains as if they had some type of schematic to go by…which we don't. And yet many problems could be that simple. But until they start selling at-home brain surgery kits, we have to find other ways. So we have to treat our minds/souls/spirits as sort of a black box. Imagining that we are sort of in an "orbit" about some type of "attractive" influence might be of use in perhaps helping us out of simplistic, perfectionistic, or superficial attempts at solutions. Yes, chaos theory more than any theory shows that minute changes initial conditions can lead to BIG differences down the road. But once we are inside our "basin" we needn't go nuts with guilt or shame for all the little things we do which seem so counter-productive. Although many of these small things no doubt make our lives worse in some ways, we might be mistaken to think that they play much of a part in the big picture of making larger, more significant changes in our lives. And it might also provide a useful model for showing us how to perhaps jump to different basins in hopes of finding an attractor of love, for instance. This is where a change of jobs, locals, or even just a state of mind could be key…or not. I’m not sure what works. But with paradigm in hand we might look back at what doesn't work try something new and different. It's a prescription for not beating our heads against the wall over and over again hoping that this time something or other will work.
Phil also said: That's true enough, but I don't think it's necessary to find meaning for the "various day-to-day events in our lives." A meta-value or paradigm automatically confers meaning on everything, so one doesn't need to search among the nitty-gritty to divine additional meaning.
I think that's a very good point.
WC said: My bias, of course, which is clear on the thread "Healing the False Self," is that these questions remain continually abstract, or elusive, until a substantial, intimate relationship is engaged, either in marriage or with a therapist who can tolerate the exiled parts re-appearing, and knows how to encourage the client's capacity to keep them company so that true self awareness can be increasingly differentiated.
Yes. Perfect. If one is all bottled up in a rut because one can't relate intimately to others (how come so many people are married and this remains so?) one can see that one will stay in orbit around isolation or alienation. Until we fundamentally change to some other track, everything seems to spin inward and reinforce a sense of isolation…although these same things could conceivably reinforce just the opposite, a sense of intimacy and connection. But as long as we're in that "basin" of isolation, we're going to stay there. Small nudges may do little good. Looking through the chaos theory attractor paradigm we might forget all about baby steps (incrementally improving a patient's fear and shame issues) and simply find a way to jump into some method or methods that are analogous to the Moonie's technique of "love bombing" (if you're familiar with that term). Done for good reasons and not manipulative ones, and with sensible down-the-road reinforcement, I wonder if this would work?
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Brad:
Yeah, stagnation and codependency can make a marriage last a long, long time . . . no sign of intimacy by itself. But I know some marriages that don't stagnate permanently; they run aground and then find their flow again. But I'd agree these sort of relationships probably don't comprise the majority.
I think you may be alluding to what it would be like to fall back into presence, or the true self's ability to feel inherent goodness, peace, resolution of conflicts in the heart, etc . . . If that's what you're talking about, then the baby steps, at least as Ann Cornell and Schwartz outline it, are part of this falling back into presence and out of polarization, or out of being merged with a part serving to keep the true self mostly unconscious for ancient, protective reasons.
And so the aspect of the true self usually available in the beginning is just the ability to say "I'm sensing something in my chest that feels like sad, lonely, depressed," rather than merging oneself with the feeling where little of the true self's presence-capacity can be consciously experienced, reflected in the statement "I'm sad (I=sadness)." Then from this observer or witness, we keep that part company, letting it know we hear it. This is all detailed in brief on one of the links to Ann Cornell's work on the other thread.
The bottom line is finding there is something in us that isn't afraid, sad, etc that can be with the part that is; it may feel like only a fraction, but when we relate with parts from this perspective, the presence of the true self can be felt.
posted
I think you may be alluding to what it would be like to fall back into presence, or the true self's ability to feel inherent goodness, peace, resolution of conflicts in the heart, etc . . . If that's what you're talking about, then the baby steps, at least as Ann Cornell and Schwartz outline it, are part of this falling back into presence and out of polarization, or out of being merged with a part serving to keep the true self mostly unconscious for ancient, protective reasons.
Surely we are talking about the same end results: peace and the ability to know one's own heart and to act (or non-act) on those feelings authentically and (hopefully, but not necessarily) with love. How we get their, how we describe that path and paradigm, may be quite different. But however it gets done it's clear that something needs to get done because so many people out there have such a deep "jitters" about themselves. It's so common that it's likely a completely normal and natural process…one that helps to fuel us into action. If true (and I think it is to some extent), when magnified by this society's strong bias towards action, image, and accomplishment (and less towards contemplation, "suchness", and spirituality), the problem becomes even worse.
Big steps, little steps, new steps, blue steps (a little Dr. Seuss going there), I don't know.
Because this will help to make them money selling books, it seems okay to me to include their description below:
quote: Strange attractors are hidden islands of stability, subtle patterns of order at the heart of chaos. They are among the handful of breakthrough discoveries that gave rise to what has been called the third great scientific revolution of the twentieth century, chaos theory. Offering a revolutionary new rubric for understanding the natural world, chaos theory arms scientists with a set of powerful tools for studying complex systems in fields as diverse as particle physics, evolutionary biology, and meteorology. Now, behavioral scientists have discovered that chaos theory—which the APA Monitor identified as "an important new paradigm in psychology"—also has profound implications for deciphering human behavior.
Written by three leaders in the field, Strange Attractors explains how the principles of chaos theory can help mental health professionals arrive at a more profound understanding of the dynamics of one of the most complicated nonlinear systems—the family. Both a general introduction to chaos theory and a guide to its clinical applications, Strange Attractors details various chaos-based approaches to the assessment and treatment of families.
Central to all of the approaches outlined in this book is the concept of families as organic systems with boundaries and patterns that grow and change in complicated ways. Unlike a machine, which is a closed system, a family is open-ended, and its survival depends upon its ability to weather periods of extreme turbulence and chaos en route to calmer oases. The job of the family therapist is to identify the strange attractors that promote transformation. Using vivid vignettes and rich metaphors, Strange Attractors demonstrates how readers can apply the science of chaos theory to the art of engendering family change.
Don't know yet if chaos theory applied to psychology has taken on the form of New Age or just outright junk science. But just as, say, Teilhard may have given us new way to look at the world and thus to flesh out creative solutions that may not have otherwise occured, so may chaos theory as we back off a bit from hard, linear solutions and perhaps use this theory to see patterns we may not have noticed before.
[ October 23, 2005, 11:51 AM: Message edited by: Brad ]
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I like the sound of it, although identifying strange attactors within the family, to be effective (IMO) in psychotherapy, would have to include an interpersonal sense of that inner dynamic, which the language of physics doesn't need to utilize. You might take a look at Schwartz' weblink I posted on "Healing the False Self." His is just one model, of course, but it captures some of what you are describing here in this essay from a therapist's standpoint, where inner dynamics personify themselves as sub-personalities beyond mere anthropomorphic imaging.
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I found your first post particularly relevant to my own state of K. This desire for union is finding expression in creaturely bliss, ecstatic union with created energies, wonderful in the context of a married relationship but, at the moment, pretty well chaotic, apparently random and just downright wanton.
Yet there is a beauty in it which allows me to be gentle and gracious with myself despite the frustrations and unsuitability of it all. The drawing of the K towards this and that, her and her, are manifestations of my own brokenness; the mind knows so much but cannot consciously do anything about it but watch the energy pour out and wait for the grace of God and the overwhelming power of His Presence, His union.
Deep down I know this (God, Christ) is what I want, but I am so pulled, drawn, needy, yet not entirely blinded by these other attractions. If it were simple, if it were suitable, then good and well, but it seems so random and is so unsuitable. Perhaps there is the potential for great healing as the energy impacts upon my life and the life of those about me, I don't know. I've always found the K reaching for something, and sometimes it's found just what it needed to get me through a particular crisis.
Just like me to get all self-focused here, but it was the apparent randomness of the K's energies and the idea of an attractor that got me posting.
[ October 23, 2005, 03:37 PM: Message edited by: Stephen ]
You seem to do pretty well trusting your own lights, in as much as this is possible for any of us. But one of the things I overlook is how differently these longings are experienced when another person has given their presence to that experience. There is a certain degree of fear, I find, in dealing with these energies without their being soothed by another who is allowed to know them, and so dealing with them alone is perhaps more uncomfortable because they really do need such empathetic support. This comes in the form of therapy for me, as I'm single. In a marriage, of course, there is more room for both this intimacy and the chaos that can ensue with the false self being more fully exposed.
Sometimes yesterday's junk science is today's accepted and approved science. Chiropractic medicine is one example. There are alot of attractive folk in here, including that chap who had the novel idea of starting this thread.
posted
Sometimes yesterday's junk science is today's accepted and approved science.
Yeah! (Or pretend you just heard a Howard Dean-like “Heeeyaww!”). What you said is practically my motto, MM.. A “crank” is what I aim to be. That is someone who thinks of a new idea that is so outlandish as to paint the thinker as seemingly a fool. However, I do not wish to be known as a “crack pot.” Such a thinker may indeed share the same motivation, to pursue outlandish new ideas. It’s just that he or she never lets go of those ideas in the face of overwhelming evidence against.
Still, one or two crack pots held on long enough to see their ideas eventually supported by science.
[ November 03, 2005, 01:34 PM: Message edited by: Brad ]
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