My Practices
Untether Verbs-Nouns-Adjectives
Sometimes the following practice helps me.
In my own or other's argument, i try to see if i can parse or pick out the verbs, nouns and adjectives. Sometimes, then i try to un-tether the verbs from the noun or adjectives, and then see if the verb could go along with a different noun (adjacent to the earlier or opposite of the earlier).
Example: In 1902, science fiction writer H G Wells gave a talk titled "The Discovery of the Future". He begins by talking about two kinds of people, depending on what aspect of time (between the past or the future) does one weigh largely against their present (choices/actions/experiences). One kind of people weigh the past heavily, and another the future. (((he clarifies that this distinction is more for convenience and to accentuate the distinction))). The past heavy mind or the legal mind as he calls, says, “things have been and we are here”. While thee creative mind or the future oriented mind says, “we are here, because things have yet to be”.
From these statements, we can say that there are people, past, future (sort of nouns) and weighing (sort of the verb). So, humans end up weighing somethings, and it could be extended now from people/past/future to include other aspects like their own fitness, their social connections, or government stability, etc. Parsing such statements in such manner, gives a sort of de-strangling of the hold of habit-bias-rule-norm driven erstwhile processing.
Often, i come out with the following:
open to discoveries
humility about my own understanding
Let me look at the Opposite of this and see aspects around it. Let me do steel-man-ing (strengthening) and straw-man-ing (weakening) of each side.
How may i answer a question?
I start with the conclusion/indication of it and then give reasons or elaborations.
I start with the elaborations/reasons and then give the conclusions.
I start with parts that i agree and then share parts that i disagree, and then give the conclusions.
I start with agreements, then disagreements, and then things that are open questions for me, and then give a conclusion.
I start with agreements, then disagreements, then open questions, then instead of giving conclusions, ask for what is coming up for you, and suspend or postpone my conclusions.
I rephrase or restate your question, get concurrence on it, steel-man your argument, check if you agree with the steel-manning of it, then share my agreements and disagreements with proper arguments, and then steel-man and straw man my argument, then invite you to steel-man and straw man my argument, and then if there is need for any conclusions, end up with a beta-conclusion (open for revisions in the future).
Aisa hi hota hai (it happens like this only) and Ye to ho hi nahin sakta (this just can’t happen). Look for these in one’s own or other’s words. Try and inventory them. And then see where are these coming from. Can we frame them differently? Can we experiment differently?
Walk
Sometimes when i get stuck, i walk.
Sometimes when i am not stuck, i feel like walking, i walk
Sometimes i walk
Sometimes i walk in a manner where i become aware of micro-movements of hand or the leg, and experiment with micro-slowing or micro-speeding one of the limbs.
Sometimes i try to sense into my entire body as i walk. The vibration emerging from the interaction with each step touching the ground
Walking helps me disentangle some locked energies…most times that i enough for me to take on the storms…sometimes it even leads to ideas or insights. The can-do spirit certainly kindles differently when i walk.
Aggregate and Index
Many a times, I have realized that I collect an inventory of some things. But i am either unable to aggregate them in some manner or forget to do so.
When I created this website, I experienced it in some manner
When I created a presentation about Conscious Intervention labs, i had to force myself to aggregate work done since 2012 and then index them in a presentable manner.
Most times when I do any of the aggregating and indexing, I have some kind of inner resistance. Sometimes I do not go close to the work I have done. Over time, I discover that a sustained effort helps in establishing a revised relationship with the work done.
7. Tapping
Tapping on face, shoulder, head helps in easing the tensed up or held up bodily energies.
8. What happens when one gets paradigmatic insight/belief shift/experience shift?
sometimes during meditation, I have been gifted with some experiences. Immediately after those profound experiences, the way I saw things/situation/self/others, etc, shifted. Does it remain so always thereon?
sometimes it lasts for some time
sometimes it resurfaces when I meditate
sometimes it resurfaces when I have the memory of having had such an experience
sometimes despite recalling about the fact that I have had that experience, I am unable to integrate it in the then “here-and-now”.
the essential question that comes then is, what happens when I get an insight or I hear someone’s insights and it resonates with me? what exactly happens to me and where?
sometimes at the mental/thinking level, something unfolds or un-knots. However, it doesn’t translate much into feeling-states or the doing domain.
sometimes it has a shift in the thinking, feeling, saying, doing space.
Sometimes it has a temporary shift in thinking and feeling, however, because of the momentum of the conventions/culture/social obligations, one is unable to translate or integrate them into outer
sometimes the non-integration itself is seen as a path
sometimes one keeps going through phases of “i have got this now” and “i am just not able to understand”.
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