More SOE Basic Concepts -- The Society of Enoch

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Date Posted: 21:03:47 08/15/05 Mon
Author: Mark
Subject: More SOE Basic Concepts
In reply to: Mark 's message, "SOE Basic Concepts" on 10:54:50 08/09/05 Tue

One of the founding concepts a person needs to understand is that our perception of the world aroound us is very heavily clouded by our individual beliefs. As an event occurs in our experience we assign meaning to that event based on our peronal beliefs relating to the event. For example: You are walking down the street and see a large statured man, who appears to have not bathed or changed clothing for months is walking the opposite direction you are walking, and his course seems to be taking him directly to you. Immediately your mind races to interpret whether or not he is a threat, and to decide what kind of action you need to take to protect yourself from the possible threat his countenance and rapid approach seem to imply.

We are all constantly asking ourselves 2 questions internally: What does this mean? What should I do about it? This is how we sort our sexperiences. The problem is that we imagine what is going to happen and respond as if our imaginary future is real. This mechanism, that of observing our surroundings, interpeting them and responding to our intpretation, causes us to routinely make bad choices, to react to a truly imaginary future, often in a way that cause more harm than a non-response might have caused. This behavioural mechanism is imbedded in our subconcious, so that we are rearely more than vaugely aware of the steps of thought our mind races through as it goes from answering the: "What does this mean?" and "What should I do about it?" questions. By taking concious control of the process and stopping to analyze each step we can quickly learn to make better interpretations of events, thereby enabling us to make better choices about responding.

So how do we change this? The first step is to take back concious control of the process.

In the scenario sited above, of a person who appeared to be a street person, one of large stature who was walking directly towards us, by taking control of the interpretation process we could start by looking for other factors that would more accurately define whether or not there was any real risk of harm. What can we see in his eyes? Does he appear to be sober or not? Is he looking at us or staring off into space? What does his expression convey? We can think about these things very rapidly and make a better accessment about how much of a threat he actually presents. Perhaps in this more detailed analysis we may realize he looks very dispondant, depressed and in need of our attention. Making eye contact and sincerely smiling is a bsic form of attention and acceptance that we as human beings all need to validate our worth.

Consider the following: Years ago a suicide note was discovered in an apartment in San Fransisco. A man who had become dispondant after losing his job abd girlfriend felt like he was worthless and decided to end his life. He walked 6 miles on heavily traveled roads to the Golden Gate Bridge and jumped to his death. In his note he stated that if just ONE person smiled at him he wouldn't jump. That's all he needed, for someone, anyone, to make eye contact and smile at him.

Perhaps this man coming towards you is in that same state of mind, hoping desperately for someone, anyone, to look at him and smile, despite his outward appearance.

The reality we must all realize is that we each continuously engage in attempts to predict the future, and that almost always our predictions are incorrect. We can reach more accurtate conclusions and improve the outcome of events that are unfolding if we simply take the future prediction process out of our subconcious and put it into our concous control.

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Replies:

Re: More SOE Basic Concepts -- QUITTNER, 12:51:36 12/13/05 Tue