Self, Culture and Evolution

It’s the self that’s experiencing life, the degree of happiness, joy, satisfaction, reward, meaning and purpose, you’re feeling, and it’s the same self that’s working to influence (create), along with all the others, our cultural future, and secondly deal with the consequences of the future which we’ve all already influenced and created, and which you’re now living through.

It’s your quality of experience that’s determining the degree and quality of your participation and it’s the results you’re living through that’s influencing and even determining your quality of experience.

And all of this within an evolving 100,000 year cultural and 13.7 billion years cosmic process.

I wish I could make it simpler and easier, but without understanding who this self is (physical, metal and psychological) and without understanding the principals of evolution, you’re going to find yourself, to one degree or another, floundering with less influence and effectiveness (than you could have), which means more struggle and hardship, over your moment to moment experience, the nature and quality of your participation and the future results you/we create and experience.

And the argument that it’s all a mystery, is just no longer valid. It’s not that we know everything, it’s that we know enough ... to take response-ability.

And we swim within a common knowledge of self and evolution that’s at best archaic and at worst random, contradictory, irrational and self emasculating, but we now have the knowledge or at least, we have enough.

So let me ask, what steps have you taken to gain real knowledge, not common knowledge, of this self within a cosmic and culturally evolving context, because if you think about it for just a moment it’s obvious that without knowledge and skill in working with this self and without knowledge and skill in working within culture and an evolving context, you are going to struggle, be less effective and influential and feel more dis-empowered and disenfranchised?

Your Inconsistency Is 100% Consistent With Your Real Beliefs

A Simple Story

From the bathroom I heard a voice, that of one of my daughters, yes I have 3, shout, ‘mommy, I need some soap’, and from the kitchen I heard mommy, that would be my wife, shout in reply, ‘don’t shout at me from another room, it’s rude’.

An easy observation would be that my wife, believing that shouting from another room was rude, was making efforts to train my daughter in more polite behaviour.

But what was really going on is fascinating.

Of Purpose And Evolution

I’m sure you’ve deeply considered the mind-expanding insight that our highly developed capacity for self-reflective awareness and individuality is the product of a hundred thousand years of cultural evolution, and cultural evolution the product of three billion years of biological evolution, and biological evolution the product of almost fourteen billion years of cosmic evolution, and all of it just one unfolding process.

And no matter how you slice the cake, you come back again and again to the questions, for what purpose, to what end and what (if anything) drives this engine of evolution?

What's The Value In Getting All Wound Up?

I used to teach Hatha Yoga and through the carefully constructed practice, I would see my clients visibly soften. And after the classes many would say, wow Paul, I feel so relaxed, open, alive and alert, thank you so much.

And no sooner had they put there foot out the door then they started winding themselves up again.

And my question is why, why would anyone do that to themselves, and to the rest of us?

When Is The Issue Mindset And When Is It ... Something Else? Pt2

For Pt1

Response to Pt1:
Thanks for addressing my question [When is the issue mindset and when is it ... something else?]

How much do you actually know about the human psyche, your psyche, that internal mechanism that drives your behaviour and logic.

I'm a mystery to myself, revealed weekly like a serialized detective novel. My whole life is about figuring out why, what, how and all that, searching for clues.