What's the Word
I had a cavity filled, which led to an improvement in my mind, my emotional state, and to my physical performance at the gym. I have had only two cavities in my life. This experience was new to me. I found the cavity myself a few days before and had to wait for my appointment; it had probably been a factor for a few weeks, though not so bad that I noticed its affect on my daily life. Several years ago, I had discovered how the right shoes can make a difference in the way a day feels, and how an oral device to prevent me from grinding my teeth in my sleep helped me sleep better.
Small physical problems affect the way we feel, and how we think. Emotions can affect thinking even without a physical cause, and can, of course, improve or limit physical performance. Conversely, the cognitive mind can influence our emotional and our physical states. In my experience, the physical and emotional influence cognitive performance more often in more persons than the other way around. Even in instances when a person applies his or her mind to something, the motivation is emotional or physical, and the mind provides rationalizations rather than a rationale. Choices are made irrationally or because of misguided values.
After I had the cavity filled I felt an immediate surge of joy just to be alive. I found myself in a near euphoric, out-going state of mind. I sang and greeted people cheerfully. I was able to lift more weight longer and had to stop myself consciously from overdoing the workout. I had an excellent conversation with a friend, concerning, coincidentally, consciousness.
When the physical, emotional and cognitive faculties are out of alignment, consciousness is impaired. Consciousness involves our whole being, from our physical bodies and biochemical processes to how we feel and our emotions, and our thought processes, which rely on the candle of the body and the fires of life to produce the light and shadows of the mind. Consciousness includes the senses and feelings as well as common sense.
Our choices affect our consciousness. If we choose not to eat in order to lose weight, we risk physical and mental impairment. However, the mind can step in and calm the emotional and, to some extent, physiological responses. Though hungry and perhaps not as strong, we need not be angry. Adjusted intake of fluids and nutrients can maintain health, even as we reset our metabolism. Usually, however, the person who diets does so for external reasons, imposed out of a set of values or from necessity. A person with health problems associated with obesity has already made a series of choices over a period of time, for identifiable reasons, resulting in obesity. Those reasons over that time represent an inertia the person must now overcome. A person who succumbs to fashion and to the notion that being slim and muscular will make him or her more sexually desirable faces similar conflict. In both cases, the decision to lose weight is imposed from an external source that operates only because something internal is and has been missing. The motivation derives from dissatisfaction or fear. "If you don't cut down, you'll die. If you don't beef up, you'll never be loved."
The faculties are not aligned when we act for external reasons. There are already reasons in place inside us, choices we have made, which have brought us to that place. If we try to change without understanding the reasons that got us to that point, those causes will continue to work against our new efforts. When we make choices based on emotions or from dissatisfactions we have not identified, the mind produces rationalizations and becomes the tool of our defect rather than the engineer of our transformation.
A woman who chooses to have sex for money may rationalize that decision. Sex is an emotional and physical experience. By valuing money more than those faculties, the woman will damage her own capacity for understanding, especially herself, her own responses, and other persons. She will end up impaired. That is also true for the men who pay her for sex, but for them the physical and the emotional already direct their minds. Their perversity drives them, and their decisions are impaired to begin with. They already devalue themselves and the woman. In the case of the woman, the choice is one of valuing the money more than her own faculties and responses, and may be at first a rational decision. She may need the money. The men do not need to pay for sex and certainly do not need sex at all. They move from the physical and emotional to the cognitive; she could conceivably be moving from a rational decision into actions that will affect her physically and emotionally.
The choices affect the faculties and influence consciousness. Disruptions on a daily basis change us. Values that put superstructural technologies, such as money, above the senses, above the emotions, above our primal responses, above dignity and the sanctity of the human being, will corrupt all our human faculties. Rational choices or choices made with semiconscious understanding, or choices made from emotional impulse, affect our long-term physical condition, which incrementally affects the emotions and higher intellectual performance. Like the muscles, the faculties of our beings need to be exercised and nurtured in order to keep them strong and our movements coordinated. The signals of the body do not serve us if we ignore them, but we must respond to them sensibly and with respect for those faculties. The emotions fail to serve us, if we fail to interpret them and learn what they mean. The mind becomes ultimately a rationalizer, a confuser in ourselves, if we do not care for our faculties of sense, emotion, and reason.
If we let these matters go, failing to pay attention now and then, and then increasingly more often, in time we find ourselves lost. The cumulative psychological distortion and damage makes recovery more difficult. Like being out of shape for many years, the recovery of our basic selves after years of bad choices compounded by further bad choices often requires drastic dogmas and routines, such as Twelve Step programs, religion or other externally enforced rituals -- technologies, in a sense. Often, we end up following those new masters at the expense of ourselves, again impairing our faculties.
Nothing is more valuable than our beings. Any choice that fails to value the human being will lead to corruption of the faculties, corruption of values, and corruption of the mind. Human contact and sound socialization has been corrupted by placing money, a social means, above the persons using it. We care nothing for the people but only want their money. So we devalue ourselves. We care nothing about ourselves, caring more for money, fearing more a lack of money than a lack of sleep or a lack of genuine conversation.
Nothing is more valuable than our beings. Ideologies, whether political or religious, are a technology. They are device of the mind. When we value them above ourselves, we have created false idols; we are moving down a path of corruption and will do evil when we act in the name of these beliefs, if we value them above the human element.
Like a cavity in the tooth, a lesion of consciousness impairs a person. Valuing ourselves, physical and mental health, other human beings and human contact, raises the quality of life. The unexamined life is not worth living. Any rationalized value systems which place tools above people, ideas above people, things above people corrupt what makes life worth living: the capacity for examining our lives clearly.
Small physical problems affect the way we feel, and how we think. Emotions can affect thinking even without a physical cause, and can, of course, improve or limit physical performance. Conversely, the cognitive mind can influence our emotional and our physical states. In my experience, the physical and emotional influence cognitive performance more often in more persons than the other way around. Even in instances when a person applies his or her mind to something, the motivation is emotional or physical, and the mind provides rationalizations rather than a rationale. Choices are made irrationally or because of misguided values.
After I had the cavity filled I felt an immediate surge of joy just to be alive. I found myself in a near euphoric, out-going state of mind. I sang and greeted people cheerfully. I was able to lift more weight longer and had to stop myself consciously from overdoing the workout. I had an excellent conversation with a friend, concerning, coincidentally, consciousness.
When the physical, emotional and cognitive faculties are out of alignment, consciousness is impaired. Consciousness involves our whole being, from our physical bodies and biochemical processes to how we feel and our emotions, and our thought processes, which rely on the candle of the body and the fires of life to produce the light and shadows of the mind. Consciousness includes the senses and feelings as well as common sense.
Our choices affect our consciousness. If we choose not to eat in order to lose weight, we risk physical and mental impairment. However, the mind can step in and calm the emotional and, to some extent, physiological responses. Though hungry and perhaps not as strong, we need not be angry. Adjusted intake of fluids and nutrients can maintain health, even as we reset our metabolism. Usually, however, the person who diets does so for external reasons, imposed out of a set of values or from necessity. A person with health problems associated with obesity has already made a series of choices over a period of time, for identifiable reasons, resulting in obesity. Those reasons over that time represent an inertia the person must now overcome. A person who succumbs to fashion and to the notion that being slim and muscular will make him or her more sexually desirable faces similar conflict. In both cases, the decision to lose weight is imposed from an external source that operates only because something internal is and has been missing. The motivation derives from dissatisfaction or fear. "If you don't cut down, you'll die. If you don't beef up, you'll never be loved."
The faculties are not aligned when we act for external reasons. There are already reasons in place inside us, choices we have made, which have brought us to that place. If we try to change without understanding the reasons that got us to that point, those causes will continue to work against our new efforts. When we make choices based on emotions or from dissatisfactions we have not identified, the mind produces rationalizations and becomes the tool of our defect rather than the engineer of our transformation.
A woman who chooses to have sex for money may rationalize that decision. Sex is an emotional and physical experience. By valuing money more than those faculties, the woman will damage her own capacity for understanding, especially herself, her own responses, and other persons. She will end up impaired. That is also true for the men who pay her for sex, but for them the physical and the emotional already direct their minds. Their perversity drives them, and their decisions are impaired to begin with. They already devalue themselves and the woman. In the case of the woman, the choice is one of valuing the money more than her own faculties and responses, and may be at first a rational decision. She may need the money. The men do not need to pay for sex and certainly do not need sex at all. They move from the physical and emotional to the cognitive; she could conceivably be moving from a rational decision into actions that will affect her physically and emotionally.
The choices affect the faculties and influence consciousness. Disruptions on a daily basis change us. Values that put superstructural technologies, such as money, above the senses, above the emotions, above our primal responses, above dignity and the sanctity of the human being, will corrupt all our human faculties. Rational choices or choices made with semiconscious understanding, or choices made from emotional impulse, affect our long-term physical condition, which incrementally affects the emotions and higher intellectual performance. Like the muscles, the faculties of our beings need to be exercised and nurtured in order to keep them strong and our movements coordinated. The signals of the body do not serve us if we ignore them, but we must respond to them sensibly and with respect for those faculties. The emotions fail to serve us, if we fail to interpret them and learn what they mean. The mind becomes ultimately a rationalizer, a confuser in ourselves, if we do not care for our faculties of sense, emotion, and reason.
If we let these matters go, failing to pay attention now and then, and then increasingly more often, in time we find ourselves lost. The cumulative psychological distortion and damage makes recovery more difficult. Like being out of shape for many years, the recovery of our basic selves after years of bad choices compounded by further bad choices often requires drastic dogmas and routines, such as Twelve Step programs, religion or other externally enforced rituals -- technologies, in a sense. Often, we end up following those new masters at the expense of ourselves, again impairing our faculties.
Nothing is more valuable than our beings. Any choice that fails to value the human being will lead to corruption of the faculties, corruption of values, and corruption of the mind. Human contact and sound socialization has been corrupted by placing money, a social means, above the persons using it. We care nothing for the people but only want their money. So we devalue ourselves. We care nothing about ourselves, caring more for money, fearing more a lack of money than a lack of sleep or a lack of genuine conversation.
Nothing is more valuable than our beings. Ideologies, whether political or religious, are a technology. They are device of the mind. When we value them above ourselves, we have created false idols; we are moving down a path of corruption and will do evil when we act in the name of these beliefs, if we value them above the human element.
Like a cavity in the tooth, a lesion of consciousness impairs a person. Valuing ourselves, physical and mental health, other human beings and human contact, raises the quality of life. The unexamined life is not worth living. Any rationalized value systems which place tools above people, ideas above people, things above people corrupt what makes life worth living: the capacity for examining our lives clearly.
posted by Unknown | 12:24 PM
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