glossary

Abiding: Abiding is the seventh stage--analogous to both causal and nondual awareness.  Having experienced Nonconceptuality, and having developed our certainty in interrelationship as deep as the universe, we practice and actualize an abiding consciousness that is expressed eventually as sahaj samadhi or unshakable spontaneity.  The differences between joy, peace, and compassion we still experienced in degrees at the level of Nonduality are worked out and fully integrated at this stage.  Just as flow states characterize the stage of Clarity, oneness states characterize the stage of Abiding.  At this stage, the skill, the activity, and the doer are fully integrated or nonseparable.

Affirmation: Affirmation is usually the third step in the motivation/change process.  Affirmation is more considered and less powerful than engagement.  If you think of the example of an addiction, engagement is the compulsive force behind the addiction, while affirmation is the decision to either endorse the direction of that force or not.  Affirmation as a step, then, can involve refusal/denial, affirmation, or ambiguity.

Appreciation: Appreciation is the fourth level of experience.  When adults find themselves dissatisfied with a reductionistically rational worldview, with mythical religion, and also with New Agey metaphysical explanations, they may advance their experience of life by practicing mindful appreciation by whatever names.  Primarily, mindful appreciation is a way of dealing with emotional reactivity and maintaining a pragmatic positive outlook.  Mindful appreciation is the basis of consistent inspiration.

Association Matrix: An association matrix is the universe of phenomena, including processes, that make up one's conscious and nonconscious awareness.  Or we could say "intentionally accessible and nonintentionally accessible" awareness.

Attention: Attention is used, roughly, as the focal aspect of awareness.

Awareness: Awareness is the individual's field of consciousness.

Clarity:  Clarity is the fifth level of experience as well as a quality of consciousness.  This level is characterized by flow states, differentiating a cruder ecstasy from a subtler bliss, inspiration, and it may also invest a degree of excellence in one's professional field or one's enjoyment of work.

Change: Change is the fifth and last step of the motivation/change process.  We review the previous steps and consider how next to improve our situation.  As opposed to the biological concept of homeostasis, change is the step that creates homeodynamic progress.  Change and priming often leak into one another, so we can see the process of motivation/change as a cycle.

Comprehensive Techniques: Some situations are best addressed by increasing our comprehension of them, comprehension in the sense of being able to see the whole as a whole.  Essentially, then, comprehensive techniques involve including the new knowledge or experience that it takes to grasp some set of circumstances as a more complete or detailed whole.  See corrective and vitality techniques.

Concentration: Concentration is the second major attentional skill, fitting the stage of Purpose.  Besides being receptive to stimuli from the environment, we are also actively agentic.  Following responsiveness, concentration is the ability to remain focused on some stimulus or goal.  States of concentration have particular qualities and neurological correlates, such as a higher than average degree of synchronization of brainwaves.  The major challenges at the stage of Purpose are mitigating impulsive drives and overcoming distraction.  Concentration is the ability to do so.

Continuation: Continuation is the fourth step in the motivation/change process.  Once we have both engaged and affirmed some activity, there are most often things we need to continue to do to maintain that activity or set of circumstances.  Continuation, then, is the behavioral equivalent of homeostasis. 

Corrective Techniques: In trying to create progress, we employ techniques.  Corrective techniques identify a problem or symptom and then attempt to address, correct, that problem.   See comprehensive and vitality techniques.

Design Processes: In comparison to emergent processes, design processes are those which are simple enough to be designed or planned intentionally.

Distributed Processes: As opposed to systemic and serial processes, where the relationship between steps or parts can be fairly certain, distributed processes function more like a connect-the-dots diagram.  Creating health and happiness can be said to be somewhat distributed processes since we know this can occur, but it is hard to systematize happiness or write an instruction booklet of serial steps to take.  If enough of the right pieces are put in place, though, we can recognize the creation of something like happiness.  Intuition seems to involve a distributed manner of processing, successful therapy has many distributed aspects, raising kids, etc.  Many social processes seem to have a distributed structure and a certain "critical mass" required to recognize the relationships between parts or move the process forward.  Most people are familiar with designing serial and systemic processes but not so with distributed processes.  With increased familiarity and research, we may be able to move from describing "distributed" processes with a somewhat fuzzy logic to describing the same processes as serial or systemic.  We might also be able to inject a degree of creativity or openness into serial or systemic processes by attempting to see them as distributed.

Engagement: Engagement is usually the second step in the motivation/change process.  Engagement involves the feeling of drive or force.  It is called engagement because this is the step where we move into an actively felt engagement with a topic or set of circumstances.  Sometimes, engagement follows affirmation.

Envisioning: Problem-solving is one method of creating progress, but problem-solving maintains an association to the past that carries negative emotional overtones.  In effect, when we only look for progress by problem-solving, we live from one problem to another.  This is a false view of living, "life is suffering", but a view that many people live with.  Envisioning involves creating progress by engaging a sense of possibility and allowing problems to dissipate once they are addressed.  The present-to-future focus involved with envisioning is different from the past-to-future focus involved with problem-solving.  Problem-solving may be included in envisioning, but at some point, we move off of a focus on the past, we involve more mindful appreciation of the present and move into the future referring back (when we do refer back) to the appreciation involved in our progress.

Emergent Processes: As compared with design processes, emergent processes are those which are simply too complex to plan.  When feedback systems are involved in complex processes, it may be necessary to monitor change rather than only trying to predict or design change.

Emotional Reactivity: Emotional reactivity is roughly analogous to what Eckhart Tolle has called the "pain body", what people refer to as a false self, small self, or a negative usage of "ego".  It is the collection of emotional habituation that comes into effect when we react unintentionally.  Usually used in a negative connotation, I would say that in a Buddhist sense, we should include "positive" or enjoyable emotions in this concept since it is possible to have enjoyable reactions to something like extreme submission which can be a harmful aspect of our reactivity even if it feels good to us.

Emotional Responsiveness: Emotional responsiveness involves when we respond with our emotions in an intentional manner rather than in an unintentional, repetitive manner.

Harmony: Harmony is the sixth major attentional skill, fitting the stage of Nonconceptuality.  At this point, one has reached such a degree of integration that it is difficult to speak of attention, emotion, and action as separate.  At this advanced stage, justice is the challenge, and retribution doesn't cut the mustard.  Weighing and measuring out quantities does not suffice.  After we familiarize ourselves with flow, we continue to expand that feeling as interaction with those around us.  This necessarily involves consistent authenticity, honesty, compassion, joy, equanimity, mindfulness, etc.  Just as we eventually work on or refer to the quality of clarity within ourselves at the previous stage, opening completely beyond oneself involves sharing this experience.  Sharing that experience allows just interactions between ourselves and those around us, and we can call the quality of that communion harmony.

Inspiration: Most people are familiar with the feeling of inspiration.  Rather than allowing inspiration to simply be a sporadic feeling, it is possible to experience consistent inspiration.  At the stage of Clarity, one has the majority of tools it takes to see inspiration as a skill.  This involves applying the attentional skills I have listed along with the understanding that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi presents in the book Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience.  When we are able to balance a high degree of challenge with a similarly high degree of competence, we experience flow-states.  I use inspiration to describe the feelings involved in these flow-states along with the conceptualization that accompanies the feelings (inspired thinking).  When we think about flow-states, either in the states or afterwards, we often experience insight (breakthrough thinking).  When conceptualizations feel inspired, they feel like insight; sometimes this is actually breakthrough thinking, but sometimes it just feels like breakthrough thinking.  It is possible to simplify one's experience of insight to where the feeling does not require conceptualization in order to "scaffold" or support that feeling.  When we do not need high energy states or conceptualizations to feel flow, when the feeling of flow does not need content, I call this clarity.  Inspiration is the obvious, high-energy, enjoyable expression of clarity.

Intentional Relaxation: Intentional relaxation is the third major attentional ability, fitting the stage of Understanding.  The major challenges at this stage are tolerating ambiguity and handling cognitive dissonance.  Intentional relaxation is different from nonintentional rest, which can be gained from sleep, being soothed, drugs, etc.  The major distinction is intention.  The amount to which one is able to relax due to intention and attentional ability is considered intentional relaxation.

Intuition: Intuition arises from familiarity and heuristics.  Because it seems indirect and can function nonconsciously, it strikes us as mysterious and inexplicable, but I believe that is not the case.  Just as it is possible to develop professional intuition about how things work in a particular field of endeavor, it is possible to develop one's "personal" intuition concerning how people relate to emotional needs, desires, etc.  It is not necessary, in my experience, to actualize greatly in order to develop intuition.  Dogs are emotionally "intuitive".  I'd say that intuition means intentionally or unintentionally making correct or fitting associations.  This may result in the feeling, "I know this is right, I am sure of it, but I don't know or can't say why it is right."  Intuition may come from genetics or training and will be helped along the more we can integrate feeling and thinking.  Without a high degree of integration, impulsivity, over-conceptualization, and pride can hinder the functioning of intuition.  Intuition involves more of a distributed process as opposed to either serial or systemic processes.

Learned Helplessness:  Martin Seligman coined this term to describe the state one experiences when experiences of failure are introjected.  Learned helplessness includes passivity, depression, low creativity, reduced energy, and an absence of hopefulness.  Besides different types of agitated responses, learned helplessness is a major part of emotional reactivity.

Mindful Appreciation: Mindfulness has been taught by many traditions, so I emphasize mindful appreciation to distinguish my focus from that of other traditions.  Mindful appreciation is the fourth major attentional ability, fitting the stage of Appreciation.  Mindfulness allows us to fully address emotional reactivity because it involves the actual practice of honing awareness and maintaining awareness.  The challenge at this stage is finding the willingness to engage each moment, and mindfulness is the practice and skill which allows that.  Mindfulness involves training oneself to notice reactivity and to disidentify with it quickly, "in the moment".  Mindful appreciation allows the integration of various aspects of self and humanity (including apparently contradictory aspects) and is the basis for consistent inspiration.

Motivation/Change Process: The five steps in this process describe the basic steps in our motivational process or cycle.  (These steps are based on Prochaska and DiClemente's Stages of Change model, but the emphasis is somewhat different.)  The motivational/change process includes both "top-down" motivations and "bottom-up" motivations.  The five steps are defined in this glossary, and the blog's thread on this topic begins here.  The five steps are: priming, engagement, affirmation, continuation, and change.

Nonconceptuality:  This is the sixth level of experience.  When we learn rational systems at the level of Understanding, we move beyond a reliance on myth and feeling alone.  As we move into Nonconceptuality, we move beyond relying on or desiring the sense of bliss.  As experts in flow states, we mindfully take bliss for granted and this allows us to focus much more on others around us and the situation as opposed to our drive towards enjoyment or achievement.  This stage could be called post-rational or post-conceptual in the same way that Understanding is post-mythical.  While thinking or conceptions do not stop, our reliance on conceptions becomes increasingly less as we become increasingly able to rely on the present moment and the actual situation.  (Nonconceptuality may be seen as a spiritual or theoretical stage, since I have yet to encounter anyone who fully embodies these qualities.  It seems at least an important theoretical concept, though, in helping to explain the scientifically measurable oneness states that characterize the stage of Abiding.  For those who have a problem with the metaphysical aspects of this description, I am content to work primarily on Appreciation and Clarity.)

Play/Creativity: This is the first level of experience, lasting as the primary mode of interaction with the world from birth until somewhere around two years of age for most people.  It is characterized by playful exuberance, curiosity, and exploration of an interesting world.

Priming: Priming is the first step in the motivation/change process or cycle.  Priming involves an introduction to new topics or when new topics begin coming to awareness.  The ways in which new topics come to awareness will affect subsequent steps in the change process.

Purpose: Purpose is the second level of experience, where we really learn concentration, a sense of purpose, and persistence in pursuing our purpose.  This is the primary mode of interaction from the time we are about two until we begin really focusing on learning how and when to share along with other social conventions.

Resilience: Resilience is the ability and willingness to face challenges and overcome.

Responsiveness: Responsiveness is the first major attentional skill, fitting the stage of Play/Creativity.  The first major attentional challenge humans face is exploration of the world, and responsiveness is the ability that is necessary for successfully meeting this challenge.  Since we do not come into this world as balnk slates, the lack of responsiveness is not passivity per se, but rather emotional reactivity.

Serial Processes: Serial processes are those that happen step-by-step, as if following an instruction manual for connection a DVD player to a TV.  Compare to systemic and distributed processes.

Systemic Processes: Systemic processes are similar to serial processes, but there is a greater degree of complexity.  Systemic processes may involve a large number of interacting serical processes.  Compare to Serial and distributed processes.

Understanding: Understanding is the third level of experience.  At this level, we learn conventional morality, normal social customs, and in industrialized societies, we get to know ourselves as students.  In learning complex systems, we must be able to handle the ambiguity and cognitive dissonace involved with trying to know the unknown.  Most folks achieve this level of actualization but do not go much beyond.

Vitality Techniques: As opposed to trying to overcome problems (corrective techniques) or trying to learn something new (comprehensive techniques), we can often experience progress by simply increasing our vitality without referring to something as necessarily "wrong".  People who feel healthy but lookto improve their diets for optimal performance are looking to increase vitality, for example.  Yoga and meditation can be seen as other vitality techniques.