There might have been a bit of confusion when trying to understand my precious article Intuition & Ego. In that posting, I didn’t clearly define the terms that I used and used a number of different words in order to try to explain the same (or similar) thing. Hopefully, the information below will help clarify what I’d intended to say.
To begin, I’d like to make sure my understanding of Your Being is clear. To help, I’d like to bring in what the Wikipedia has to say as a reference. But, in doing so, we have to look at how they describe Being, for I want to deal with the concept Your Being. So, the Wikipedia states:
Being (i.e. be+-ing, by synecdoche), is an English word used for conceptualizing subjective and objective aspects of reality, including those fundamental to the self —related to and somewhat interchangeable with terms like “existence” and “living“. In its objective usage —as in “a being,” or “[a] human being” —it refers to a discrete life form that has properties of mind (sentience), which are deemed to constitute a more complex state than simple organisms (i.e. that have only “life functions“).[citation needed]
In abstract usage, “the being” or “one’s being” is the mind’s concept of the self as a whole entity —including both mind and body —wherein the being is in the mind, and the “body” is all sensory aspects within the being. Heidegger coined the Germanic term “dasein” for this property of being in his influential work Sein und Zeit (“this entity which each of us is himself…we shall denote by the term “dasein.””[1]), in which he argued that being or “dasein” links one’s sense of one’s body to one’s perception of world. Heidegger, amongst others, referred to an innate language as the foundation of being, which gives signal to (and from, cf. cognition) all aspects of being.
The way that I used the word Being in the previous posting fit directly with the first part of the second paragraph where it refers to the “concept of the self”. The difference is that in that quote it’s stated that “…the being is in the mind, and the “body” is all sensory aspects within the being.”
With my current understanding, I would word this differently. Something like: Your Being encompasses all that you are including your mind, body and everything else that makes up who and what You are. Your Being is the root of who you are. Your Being is the ‘I’ in I am. In the context in which I’ll write, Your Being is a unique living entity that has a whole bunch of tools at its disposal in which to enhance the experience of life.
I would also like to clarify what it means to sense something for it’s a pretty abstract concept that most people have come to understand as being fairly limited. To me, there are clear differences between a sense organ and the act of sensing. One is the tool and the other is how it interacts with Your Being. The Wikipedia has also made the distinction where they list “Sense” and “Sense (disambiguation)”. From Sense, we read the sense organ type definition:
Senses are the physiological capacities within organisms that provide inputs for perception.
From Sense (disambiguation) we read:
A sense in biology and psychology, is a physiological method of perception. In common usage, a sense may also mean an understanding or awareness of something in particular.
This second definition is in line with what I’m referring to when I write sensing. But to fill it out more, sensing, and the act of perception, are really closely intertwined. For when you perceive something, you’ve applied your understanding to what you’ve sensed. The semiformal definition of perception comes across like:
Perception (from the Latin perceptio, percipio) is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information.[1][2] All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs.[3] For example, vision involves light striking the retinas of the eyes, smell is mediated by odor molecules and hearing involves pressure waves. Perception is not the passive receipt of these signals, but can be shaped by learning, memory and expectation.[4][5] Perception involves these “top-down” effects as well as the “bottom-up” process of processing sensory input.[5] Perception depends on complex functions of the nervous system, but subjectively seems mostly effortless because this processing happens outside conscious awareness.[3]
This definition is mostly in line with my understanding. The part that I somewhat disagree with is the part “All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs.[3]”. If the definition of nervous system was Your Being and they dropped the part about “… which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs” I might feel better about what’s been collectively written.
I might write the definition like; Perception is the process of understanding or becoming aware of sensory information. Perception is a conscious activity, yet sensory stimulation quite often happens outside of conscious awareness.
Let’s now bring these three together.
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Your Being perceives by sensing.
That came together pretty easy! In a way, it seems so simple. This, to me, is the input side of life.
Because during the process of life we interact with our environment, there is a similar path for the output side of life.
To get a better feel for this let’s play with the idea of creativity. What does it mean to create? The common idea for creativity (similar to the common five senses) comes across like this:
Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new (a product, a solution, a work of art, a novel, a joke, etc.) that has some kind of value. What counts as “new” may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs. What counts as “valuable” is similarly defined in a variety of ways.
If you look at this common definition while keeping the idea of senses in mind, you’ll get the feeling that the type of things that they list as being ‘created’ are things that are clearly discoverable by the standard five senses.
To get a better feel for how I’m using it, we want to go a little deeper.
It is generally thought that “creativity” in Western culture was originally seen as a matter of divine inspiration.[1]
Following the link to divine inspiration we can see that they broke it up into different sections. The one that looks most promising is:
Epiphany (feeling), the sudden realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something
Linking again:
An epiphany (from the ancient Greek ἐπιφάνεια, epiphaneia, “manifestation, striking appearance”) is the sudden realization or comprehension of the (larger) essence or meaning of something. The term is used in either a philosophical or literal sense to signify that the claimant has “found the last piece of the puzzle and now sees the whole picture,” or has new information or experience, often insignificant by itself, that illuminates a deeper or numinous foundational frame of reference.
What we see here is that when someone has an epiphany, they have a sudden realization or comprehension of something. Simply put, how I would interpret this is that Your Being suddenly becames conscious of something (new). The knowledge or understanding that already existed now becomes something you can consciously act upon.
And if you’re taking notes, this is similar to what we saw in the previous posting regarding intuition!
When we go to put these ideas together, I generally refer to creativity as the process by which Your Being transfers knowledge or understanding (which is generally thought of as an epiphany or intuitive understanding) where you actively express that new understanding in some form. Typically, someone may verbalize the experience to someone, it may be written down or acted out or felt. In general, it is the act where Your Being communicates in a way that is detected consciously and acted upon.
Thus we have our output path:
- Your Being creates consciously.
The thing that unites these two different key characteristics that make up how you function is energy! I will leave the energy discussion for another day, but for Your Being to be able to either receive or transmit information, that information, however subtle it is, needs to flow to the tools that we have that can interpret it.
The most interesting part is not the energy, but rather the energy flow. The energy flow is what we experience and call life! That is what needs to happen for us to either sense or create something. The stronger the energy flow, the larger the impression on Your Being. If the energy flow is subtle, than the more stimulating energy flows need to be calmed so that the tools that receive the subtle flows can actually sense or intuit it!
I am so looking forward to expanding upon these ideas with more detailed postings. For now, I hope you have a better understanding with regards to the words I used in my previous posting (and some even earlier postings).
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