This past week, I was at The Monroe Institute, doing a course called Conscious Coherence. This came in the course of an exercise on Thursday morning.
Thursday, April 6, 2023
[Doing a TMI exercise sitting at a desk writing, rather than lying down in a CHEC unit.]
9:45 a.m. So the idea of the exercise is, look over the week, see what surfaces. This tape is to be very intense apparently. I was thinking I should reread my notes here, but maybe not. Guys?
[They had me draw a diagram.]
One way to think of 3D experience, a lot of pinpoints interacting.
Another way, lines of force and attraction and repulsion, interacting.
Same structure, different interpretations.
[Then another diagram, below the first, showing a core between magnets, that is, in a magnetic field, and they said. “only, many pairs of magnets, surrounding.”
Yes, I remember these diagrams from years ago.
Then apply them in a new way. Rather than still thinking of yourself as a unit, think of each part of you individually responding to such influences.
A tremendous amount of cross-currents, counter-pulls, instability, there.
That is the 3D condition. That is what you live, the difficulty and the challenge of it.
It’s a working-out of a way to coexist among conflicting influences.
Conflicting, ever-changing influences, yes.
So conflict is always within ourselves.
Well, a little slower.
Proceed.
External influences precipitate certain strains by pulling various elements in various directions. To the extent that you anneal various elements, you produce larger elements that then react as if units. Greater coherence in effect is possible, in the same circumstances.
But the external strains always have internal effects – and put quote marks around external and internal, of course, because that is only a way of seeing it.
[Then a drawing represent a central core of connected but varied elements, co-existing in fields created by pairs of plus or minus elements, not in one plane but in all planes.]
So “you” are not a unit being affected by external forces, even if the forces are “merely” force-fields. Instead, you are more like a chemical element (this is only analogy) with X number of protons, neutrons, electrons, each of which individually and each of which as a class (electrons, neutrons, protons) and each of which as subgroups, formed from whatever causes, are pulled differently by whatever “external” force-fields they are caught up in.
You can create or encourage certain kinds of subgroupings, by living your values, expressing your essence. A life spent radiating kindness will differ from the same life if it had expressed cruelty, or had alternated.
So what is coherence? It is not the welding-together of all your constituent elements into an inflexible unit. Rather it is like a murmuration of birds or fishes. The individual parts are still individual but they are in voluntary graceful cooperation with direction from a higher level.
[Murmuration may be defined as a large group of birds flying together, changing direction together, acting as one, rather than as many followers, one leader.]
There is advantage to being able to express and respond to and even join in with chaos. There is advantage to participating in a murmuration. The key is flexibility, not adhering to any one position, because you are faced with variation in the external world, and so need to be able to roughly mirror it.
You don’t mean “mirror chaos” by joining in with it, I imagine, so what do you mean?
In a way, that is what we do mean, but conscious mirroring is not the same thing as surrendering to a non-individual collective. It is, instead, a surfing of a wave, using discordances and cross-currents as well as correspondences and harmonies. Everything in life is part of each moment. There are no extra parts, no parts missing, no errors in construction. So when you are among chaos, the way to deal with it is not by rejection but by engagement.
But what do we mean, engagement? You know full well.
Yes, I suppose I do. We are in it and of it and not separate from it, but we remain ourselves, remain aware of our selves, our separateness, our identity.
Yes, separate and non-separate. A part of everything and individual. Living certain values but recognizing that these values are true for you, not for one and all. Every person combines different values to form, in effect, a community of one.
So – coherence?
Think of coherence as flexibility, allowing the tree to bend with the wind rather than being broken by it. Or think of it as a dynamic rather than static core within yourself. Every individual is a community of elements learning to function as an individual. Coherence is an aid to the process.
I’m getting that it is an attitude of approach.
Yes. If you are coherent, you are ready for whatever life brings you next. Not in a feet-planted way, not in fearful or aggressive anticipation, but of calm awareness, confident that nothing happens by chance, hence that anything that happens now happens now for a reason, or it would happen at a different now.
It is Emerson again: “Lowly faithful, banish fear.”
It is indeed. Nobody knows what tomorrow brings, and why should you care? You live your lives one moment of “now” at a time. Where is the need for fear?
Yet, things can make us fearful, or angry, or whatever.
Of course, and then the question is, how do you process your first-time reaction? Do you ratify chaos, or do you use experience to modify understanding? What ultimately counts in life is not your first-tier reaction (the immediate effect on you) but the second-tier reaction, what you decide about it. You may be surprised into fear or anger, and it is as well to shrug and say, “That’s just the kind of thing that happens in 3D.” but it is your second-tier reaction – your considered decision as to how you want to be, what values you want to uphold – that counts. Your life is your community learning to live as an individual. You do that by making innumerable decisions.
And coherence assists us to remember who and what we want to be.
Also, in a way, who and what you already are, in potential.
Thanks for all this. More, or do I sit quietly for the rest of the exercise?
We’re always available, you know that. It’s up to you.
I’m tempted to read this to the group, but I don’t know.
You will know. Trust the moment.
Okay. Our thanks as always.
[In the event, I did not read it to the group in debrief, but only to a self-selected group, later. And now to you.]