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Researching 'New Paradigm' Mind
Natural mechanism B-Synchronicity
Creator-Knower Self A-Creation
Perceptual re-education Task of evolving
Using the BodyMindSelf
Inner Outer:
Creativity
Power of Creation
Direction B: Direction A:
Natural 'Multi-tracking'
Awareness Creative Action
Chapter 3
Researching 'New Paradigm Mind'
In this chapter, I will present the core of my work:
the hypothesis of what I call 'New Paradigm Mind'. This developed partly from
my efforts to understand 'Business Flow', synchronicity, and the nature of my
'spiritual development', and partly from trying to make sense of my
'Exceptional Experiences' (EEs), which I have found are reflected, but only
partially explained in the existing literature. So I am endeavouring to develop
a more integrated understanding. To do this, I am applying New Paradigm
thinking, as I began to define it in chapter 1 and 2, and refining it here, to
the understanding of the mind. I will present a picture of how the New Paradigm
mind would function, and what it would feel like to use one's mind that way. I
will analyse the characteristics and skills that might be developed and how
these would affect a person's effectiveness in life. This is necessarily an
exploration and a provisional view, which I am using as a perspective for my
experiential work. It is an emerging and complex view of what it is to be a
human being living fully present and integrated into the world.
This has required me to examine my experiences from
the viewpoint of at least the following areas: psychology (including values,
purpose, self-actualisation), spiritual meaning (transpersonal psychology,
dreaming, EEs, and synchronicity), skills of attention and other related
skills, phenomenological aspects such as peak or flow experiences (or EEs) and
transformation (or EHEs), the ways in which I form thoughts, and the components
of my 'experience', with a relation to social aspects and to the body.
Creativity takes a special place because it has connections to all the other
fields. Creativity involves the self-organising force within me that drives the
evolution of my self-concept, requires a higher order of meaning, triggers flow
experiences, and drives my desire to develop the skills required to 'create my
own reality' as, for example, the Hawaiian Huna tradition claims a human being
can do (Kahili King, 1985, 1990). In its higher form, I call it my 'power of
Creation'. Intuition is treated here as the receptive aspect of a general
quality of mind whose active aspect is creativity.
I leave out of this study the huge but related, fields
of emotional healing and interpersonal relationships that
conventional
psychology addresses. I spent twenty years inquiring into these two aspects and
now leave them
for others to research. The process of maturing and
integrating the personality is a pre-requisit for the adequate use of the
'power of creation'. I consider it a given for this work, which requires a
conscious and unbiased (as much as is possible) awareness of personal
motivations and assumptions, a capacity to communicate effectively with oneself
and others, and deals with the functioning of thought and perception rather
than subjective and psychological experience per se.
"The emergence of intuition is part of a more global
shift in values that has been chronicled by numerous sharp-eyed observers. The
passionate pursuit of both individual growth and a better world, begun in
earnest in the 1960 's, has led to a re-evaluation of conventional beliefs,
among them, the way we use our minds and the way we approach
knowledge."
(Goldberg, 1983, p.16)
Goldberg's words describe well my experience relative
to mind and knowledge, especially over the past 12 months. The same applies to
the way I approach my relation to the world, and so to the action component of
the shift in thinking, creativity, is central. My concern is with the
possibility that we may have a direct, creative influence on reality,
voluntarily or not, and not only social reality. We need to develop frameworks
to understand how we may use better our body and mind in all their aspects, how
to live more effectively in the world and with an inner sense of fulfilment and
happiness.
In this study, I will investigate how each aspect of
experience comes into play in the creative and self-rerecreating process of
'spiritual' development, and I will arrange these dimensions into a
multi-dimensional continuum. I recognised in particular two complementary
processes within myself, which require each the development of different,
mutually supportive skills. I have called them the 'A' and 'B' directions of
experience (my terminology for this may evolve). I have found only hints, in
the literature, concerning these processes, often in metaphoric terms, but no
explicit descriptions or discussions. In many models, these two directions are
simply not recognised and are confused with a single, linear movement of
'development'.
In distinguishing previously undistinguished elements
of experience, I make connections between a great number of insights from a
number of fields and so need to form a unifying framework that is analytical
but must also be wholistic, preserving the complexity while also highlighting
analogies and simplicity. My goal is not to make prediction possible but to
bring into light areas offering a potential for learning and
evolution.
I could find no linear way to expose the complexity of
all these aspects, so I will be retracing somewhat the 'detective story' of my
inquiry, highlighting (in boxes) specific side issues. The experiential part of
my study comes in the form of EE reports*, which I have gathered in Appendix
3.3 to maintain a certain logic flow of the
* See chapter 1, on science, for a presentation of
'Exceptional Experiences' describing the phenomenology of the experiences, and
how to report on them.
ideas presented. The overall organisation of this
chapter brings together a wide variety of ideas into clusters which reflect
each a different aspect of the whole that is 'a person'. In this sense, each
cluster is a kind of 'fractal' image (a chaos theory term) of the whole, but
expressed through a different aspect of experience. These are: psychological
meaning of 'self', creativity, the functions of mind, the two directions of
awareness and evolution, the present and the holistic flow experience, the
skills of body and mind, and the effects of our relating to the world:
synchronicity. I have addressed the social aspects in my recent SLAM paper
(Bouchon, 1998d), which I will summarise in my conclusions, and the 'ecological
self' appears through what I will call 'Natural Awareness'. Each cluster of
ideas also contains graphic figures, my way of making use of 'imaging'
qualities of mind, in order to brush a rich picture of what 'New Paradigm mind'
might be. The very process of writing this chapter and the whole document has
been for me an opportunity to learn to think in this complex manner in order to
express the simplicity of my intuitive understanding (see EE #1 in Appendix
3.3).
'Creating' is bringing into actuality a new reality,
so it originates in the way we view present 'reality', know it, perceive it,
interpret it, like or dislike it, and so relies also on the assumptions we make
about what 'reality' altogether is. The creative process is based on 'knowing'.
Intuition is one way to extend our ability to know. I agree with Goldberg when
he writes:
"Where intuition is concerned, the obstacles are rooted
in long-standing epistemological assumptions, which are perpetuated in the
institutions that teach us how to use our minds." (Goldberg, 1983,
p.16)
Creation and epistemology are intimately linked.
Creation and intuition, acting and knowing, are two aspects of the same coin,
two expressions of the human mind. This led to my wondering what 'science'
means, and to my desire to redefine it as I did in chapter 1.
3.1 IDENTIFICATIONS OF SELF (PART I)
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