Qualities of essence

[sarek]

The Work tells us a lot about personality but I have not been able to find nearly as much on our inborn essence as it is found in a very young child.

So how can we quantify and qualify it? What kinds of essences are there? Is there a limited number of possibilities or does anything go?

 

[Chu]

Have you read Political Ponerology? There are some very important clues in there.

 

[Buddy]

The Work tells us a lot about personality but I have not been able to find nearly as much on our inborn essence as it is found in a very young child.

So how can we quantify and qualify it?

How did (or would) you quantify or qualify...

...the realisation that so much what I deemed set and unchangeable, is now open to the light of day.

...as it relates to "the five year old feeling"?

I'm asking because similar questions come to me on occasion. When they do, I'm usually reminded of the double-slit experiment and the available points of view.

Maybe from one point of view, the electron sensing device, in the act of measuring, creates that stable or static pattern of an electron at that moment. From a hypothetical point of view within the dynamic fluxing quantum energy field, a potential, sensing the observing/measuring unit and a possibility for emerging from the dynamic fluxing wave as an electron, simply chooses to do so as an act of 'becoming'. From a systems point of view, maybe the entire 'observer-observed' system engages in a form of (bi)lateral communication - the observer and the observed cooperate together to bring about a desired or expected outcome (no value judgment implied here).

So, with the above in mind, I wonder to what extent our environment, including people, provides the framework and the necessary motivation to compel our childhood essence to make an acceptable personality structure; the false parts remaining structure only due to an inability of essence to inform anything false?

This is just an example of the thinking process that usually attends my perception of meaning underlying that kind of question.

 

[sarek]

The Work tells us a lot about personality but I have not been able to find nearly as much on our inborn essence as it is found in a very young child.

So how can we quantify and qualify it?

...the realisation that so much what I deemed set and unchangeable, is now open to the light of day.

...as it relates to "the five year old feeling"?

I'm asking because similar questions come to me on occasion. When they do, I'm usually reminded of the double-slit experiment and the available points of view.

Maybe from one point of view, the electron sensing device, in the act of measuring, creates that stable or static pattern of an electron at that moment. From a hypothetical point of view within the dynamic fluxing quantum energy field, a potential, sensing the observing/measuring unit and a possibility for emerging from the dynamic fluxing wave as an electron, simply chooses to do so as an act of 'becoming'. From a systems point of view, maybe the entire 'observer-observed' system engages in a form of (bi)lateral communication - the observer and the observed cooperate together to bring about a desired or expected outcome (no value judgment implied here).

So, with the above in mind, I wonder to what extent our environment, including people, provides the framework and the necessary motivation to compel our childhood essence to make an acceptable personality structure; the false parts remaining structure only due to an inability of essence to inform anything false?

This is just an example of the thinking process that usually attends my perception of meaning underlying that kind of question.

Am i right in presuming you are seeing the Essence as the observer which collapses the wave function along certain lines? That makes me wonder how this relates to 'Aim'. Is Essence perhaps the compass which helps give direction to the yes/no questions? Could Essence in this respect be the neutralising force?

I am not altogether sure how this relates to Conscience which after all also has a function in directing the outcome of the yes/no choices we make.
Is higher conscience not to be seen as universal and objective? And if so could that truly be seen as being part of Essence or does it function alongside of it?

 

[Eongar]

As G said, our soul is a seed we have to irrigate. As one living in his bones itself shares the false personality and what affects your life and your perception of things (and understands) will differentiate one from the other. As Ailén said, reading PP and other threads in psychology section can help us better interpret these concepts and then take them to consider the life of each.

I also recommend reading this thread:

The First Initiation

http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,28065.0.html

 

[Eongar]

As one living in his bones itself shares the false personality and what affects your life and your perception of things

I meant feels

 

[Possibility of Being]

The Work tells us a lot about personality but I have not been able to find nearly as much on our inborn essence as it is found in a very young child.

So how can we quantify and qualify it? What kinds of essences are there? Is there a limited number of possibilities or does anything go?

In my understanding, the Work is a very practical thing and it is about knowing and mastering your machine, first and foremost. Contrary to what it may seem, that's not an easy task and can take a life-long effort and most often, more than one life time. To help us all to understand its concepts AND provide concrete tools that can help in progressing on this path, we explore the cognitive science which goes hand in hand with the Work ideas.

One of the main Work concepts is the one of developing all three centers equally - emotional, intellectual and motor centers - and mastering their functioning, so that they are debugged and active in the areas they are supposed to be and don't claim control in the other centers' domains. Putting too much emphasis, and spending energy on intellectualism (or intellectualisation*) is not effective in the Work terms.

intellectualisation - (psychiatry) a defense mechanism that uses reasoning to block out emotional stress and conflict

I would suggest for you to ask yourself, "is knowing the answer - if it is at all possible - going to help me work on myself in my current state of being?"

Following your mind wandering, wherever it takes you, is a mechanical act, requiring no, or very little, attention. It is indulging your brain/mind instead of disciplining it. You can easily get lost in abstract thinking which leads nowhere, just occupies your time and drains your energy that could be better spent on getting known yourself. To use Maurice Nicoll's words, "It is always a sign of negative and automatic questioning which is worse than formatory questioning, to ask about Asia when a lecture is being given on America or to ask about exceptions when a rule is being explained."

You know, one needs to indulge themselves from time to time, so there is nothing wrong with it in general. My point here is, one should be aware when he/she is indulging themselves (be it emotionally, intellectually or in their choice of temporary physical activity) and take it as that, and then be able to get back on track and keep on doing the hard work with at least equal energy, curiosity and commitment. :)

 

[Laura]

I'm asking because similar questions come to me on occasion. When they do, I'm usually reminded of the double-slit experiment and the available points of view.

Maybe from one point of view, the electron sensing device, in the act of measuring, creates that stable or static pattern of an electron at that moment. From a hypothetical point of view within the dynamic fluxing quantum energy field, a potential, sensing the observing/measuring unit and a possibility for emerging from the dynamic fluxing wave as an electron, simply chooses to do so as an act of 'becoming'. From a systems point of view, maybe the entire 'observer-observed' system engages in a form of (bi)lateral communication - the observer and the observed cooperate together to bring about a desired or expected outcome (no value judgment implied here).

So, with the above in mind, I wonder to what extent our environment, including people, provides the framework and the necessary motivation to compel our childhood essence to make an acceptable personality structure; the false parts remaining structure only due to an inability of essence to inform anything false?

This is just an example of the thinking process that usually attends my perception of meaning underlying that kind of question.

I understand what you are saying, Buddy, but I wonder if other people do? (I had to read it twice and think about every word.) Can you explain it a little more simply? I know it will take more words, but sometimes, it's worth it for those who don't have the same interests in physics, etc. Ark sometimes tells me stories, personifying the concepts, so that I understand them.

 

[Buddy]

Am i right in presuming you are seeing the Essence as the observer which collapses the wave function along certain lines?

Excuse me while I back up a moment. I understand that question to represent a conventional and slight misunderstanding of quantum mechanics as that subject was intellectually grasped in the early days of the field. It might be more accurate to say probabilities collapse. That's conceptual analogy suitable for that context, but not quite what I meant.

I don't know anyone that can talk about essence in a way that will allow you to fully understand it from a text reading. That may be why you don't find as much info on it compared to personality. Essence seems to be that which you come to know something about through your own efforts to work on other but related things and really, really listening to what lies behind the words - including your own. Even that behavior can be another way of expressing how to find essence. Here's another in a different subject area:

Imagine yourself standing off at a distance from a forest. Take a picture, capturing as much of the forest as you can. Transfer the picture to your computer. Got it? :) OK, now your task is to use a software program to write an algorithm that will compress that image to the smallest file size allowable by the technology and your skill in implementing it so that you can transfer this image across the internet using minimal bandwidth. When someone opens the image on their computer, the algorithm will recreate the picture by following its rules, iterating over the code as many times as the code itself tells it to in order to recreate the image.

So, how would you proceed to compress that image without losing any needed information when there are no rules for finding the rules to do this? All I can say is that you start with a basic equation and adjust all the elements of it over and over until you find the one irreducible equation or interdependent set of equations that represent the mathematical essence of that forest as an image. As it happens, your procedure will have discovered the basic pattern or set of patterns with all redundancy removed and with a 'look up' table for translating math and image coordinates to various sensory info like color and such and that when duplicated over and over in self-similar ways, results in an expanding view of the original picture.

The inventors of the jpeg2000 algorithm did just that.

Now, keep in mind that this is math as applied to image compression and expansion. As such, it is only analogy to any other aspect of reality and should be understood as such. It may even be a poor one to represent personality and essence, but it's what I've got to offer for thought, so just think about it for whatever it's worth intellectually.

As far as in-the-trenches work and living daily life, I second the recommendations of other posters. For the work that you do off this forum and for your own protection, you'll probably find reading recommendations more fruitful.

Thanks for the feedback.

 

[Buddy]

I understand what you are saying, Buddy, but I wonder if other people do? (I had to read it twice and think about every word.) Can you explain it a little more simply? I know it will take more words, but sometimes, it's worth it for those who don't have the same interests in physics, etc. Ark sometimes tells me stories, personifying the concepts, so that I understand them.

OK, I'll give it a shot. In the meantime, maybe the latest addition will help. Of course, not knowing much about people's background makes it harder to find the right reference frame, so I'll try for something more basic.

Thanks for letting me know. :)

 

[Buddy]

I understand what you are saying, Buddy, but I wonder if other people do? (I had to read it twice and think about every word.) Can you explain it a little more simply? I know it will take more words, but sometimes, it's worth it for those who don't have the same interests in physics, etc. Ark sometimes tells me stories, personifying the concepts, so that I understand them.

OK, here's my attempt. I haven't focused this tightly in a while, so I hope it works without setting up further difficulties.

Maybe from one point of view, the electron sensing device, in the act of measuring, creates that stable or static pattern of an electron at that moment.

A parent is reclining in his lay-z-boy watching TV while a 2 year old child plays close by. The child is mostly essence or emotional nature or an experiencing self. At any given moment, the child can be without cognitive dissonance and comfortable with whatever understanding he has about anything. In functional terms, he can 'be' his understanding (i.e., not separate from his understanding).

The parent calls out "child, come here!" Then, parent says "you're too loud, be quiet!" The child is blank-faced for a split second - his face showing an expression of expectancy while he waits the split second for the full meaning of what he's just heard to impress itself on him.

The parent, observing that it is hard to hear the TV over the child's noises of excitement, has measured the volume level of the child as 'too loud.' Hearing this statement and absorbing its tone, pitch, volume, along with the facial expressions of the parent, any other body motions and having an awareness of his own presence in its relationship with the parent, experiences this understanding as something he has just become (you are too loud).

This is different from how the child was experiencing himself before he was called. Internally, a negative self-reflection is generated and he is forced to accept this state of being and its evaluation of bad. Since he's only 2 years old, he doesn't make any distinction between 'being too loud' and making a volume of noise that needs to be turned down. He doesn't know to make that distinction because the parent didn't make that distinction. The child will have to learn this distinction some other way - hopefully before he's accumulated a bunch of negative self evaluations. For the time being though, from the electron sensing device (parent)'s point of view and as compared to a quantity/quality (desired sound volume), the act of observing and interpreting (measuring) the child has created the electron (a too-loud child which is a bad thing to be). And in that parent's mind, that's exactly what the child is.

From a hypothetical point of view within the dynamic fluxing quantum energy field, a potential, sensing the observing/measuring unit and a possibility for emerging from the dynamic fluxing wave as an electron, simply chooses to do so as an act of 'becoming'.

The child is mostly essence or emotional being. We can't say what he 'is' but we can talk about what we observe. If I may use the term 'orientation', I say that most children are essentially benevolent. All qualities like kindness, love, creativity, helpfulness that we generally associate with a benevolent orientation are being expressed or they are still in a stage of being potential and will be expressed in one way or another pretty soon.

He may not have much of a self-concept since he's still in early stages of growth, still dependent in almost every way and hasn't separated and individuated into anything resembling an autonomous human. At present, all of that is still potential. He is still learning everything from feedback as he interacts with his environment and with other people. And as we observe, we can see that he has not yet created an inner narrator of any significance because he doesn't yet need to. Near as we can tell, most all of his attention is focused externally.

From this child's point of view, since his sense of himself is not yet 'fixated', or he hasn't yet fully invested in some specific personality or way of being that should be different from other ways of being, he can 'be' anything; from a helpful dishwasher from his perch on a stool at the kitchen sink to superman flying around the yard/metropolis saving all the nice people from those horrible bad guys.

Depending on the behavior of parents, guardians or whoever provides immediate feedback to him, he will come to understand what kinds and types or ways of being are acceptable and will probably choose different ones for different situations for different reasons - even at the expense of forming various contradictory "I"'s or aspects of self that he will somehow sense as contradictory. If parental feedback is done with thought and care and the child's undefined but felt sense of self or essence is not constantly pointed to with everything he does while he's learning, then the child will remain mostly positive and will see the various possibilities of what he might become as these possibilities are perceivable in his environmental context. Eventually he might choose what he wants to be and invest his energies into becoming that. And it will be all good.

If parents, guardians are not as thoughtful and caring with what they say and what kind of environment they are creating for a child who can be anything, then the child will still follow his nature, acting on the impulses to do things, become someone, but his choices will be limited to what his environment provides. Still, he will become someone or something by choosing some path to manifest those energies that compel him to act.

From a systems point of view, maybe the entire 'observer-observed' system engages in a form of (bi)lateral communication - the observer and the observed cooperate together to bring about a desired or expected outcome (no value judgment implied here).

From a third-person point of view, there is only one system within which people interact with each other and with elements of their environment. Using the inductive mind, we watch and infer the various goals, purposes and intents of the individuals by what actually happens as time marches forward. We see all the interactions. We see that there is a level where people are intellectually living a life that only notices what's in their scripts. They live autobiographical stories they tell themselves - stories which includes a biographical script of the people they're aware of - scripts they create as they go along. There's also another level to what actually happens. By noticing these two levels we can validate the reality of system 1 and system 2.

As one example, a man may be going about his life believing he is in pursuit of the perfect relationship and he may be able to count, say, 50 girl or women friends and lovers over the course of his life. His conversations about relationships with women may be anything but will always end with observations about how hard it is to find the perfect person. That is what he thinks he believes. The reality is that he essentially hates women and has dedicated his energies to destroying the lives of as many women as he can in order to 'pay back' some female who is now just a character in a memory of a trauma that he experienced in his youth.

This is the parent who is now raising the child. The parent will never integrate his systems and experience the truth of himself because he's got uncountable layers of justifications for his behaviors, attitudes and moods. The examples of various ways of being that he provides to the child he is raising is that set of limitations from which the child has to choose.

At any rate, the moment-by-moment interactions between parent and child make up the feedback which the child will eventually translate in his mind as a structure of a personality that is best suited for survival in his environment. The entire field of interaction over time can be viewed as a single system where two biological beings co-operate, with good, bad and mixed results, as they both struggle to create and recreate themselves continuously, moment-to-moment and without sinking back down into non-being. Both persons are also representing themselves as one family (the system).

So, in summary, I see essence more like a field of potential as well as a fundamental substrate of being. A child starting out with a benevolent orientation is essentially potential for the highest levels of creativity and benefit to mankind. With the wrong feedback, though, over time he can be twisted into a malevolent thing, forever feeling but denying the difference between what he could have been and what he is. Maybe his inner impulses will then be directed outward in overt and covert ways to destroy what he, himself, cannot have and then eventually himself?

This is a bit about how I see essence although I must say the boundary line between personality and essence is somewhat as blurry to me as the exact boundary line between form and content and the one between blue and green.

Assuming at least an intuitive grasp of essence now, maybe the purpose of this forum can be seen in its function of helping us find and get rid of anything false about us so that we can reconnect with the real 'us' and build from there toward a goal of a unified "I."

 

[United Gnosis]

Thank you, Buddy. Thank you so much.

 

[Moonbird]

Thank you, Buddy. Simplifying and personalizing the concepts as Laura suggested helped me understand your explanation perfectly. :)

 

[Carl]

So, in summary, I see essence more like a field of potential as well as a fundamental substrate of being. A child starting out with a benevolent orientation is essentially potential for the highest levels of creativity and benefit to mankind. With the wrong feedback, though, over time he can be twisted into a malevolent thing, forever feeling but denying the difference between what he could have been and what he is. Maybe his inner impulses will then be directed outward in overt and covert ways to destroy what he, himself, cannot have and then eventually himself?

This is a bit about how I see essence although I must say the boundary line between personality and essence is somewhat as blurry to me as the exact boundary line between form and content and the one between blue and green.

Assuming at least an intuitive grasp of essence now, maybe the purpose of this forum can be seen in its function of helping us find and get rid of anything false about us so that we can reconnect with the real 'us' and build from there toward a goal of a unified "I."

Maybe the boundary lines are not actually so blurry, and you are confusing essence and personality here? The situations you describe above sound to me more like a child learning to form a personality, in order to deal with the world that is presented to him/her, but the essence of the child is not necessarily changing. They are just constructing buffers, along with the false personality that they will use to deal with this lifetime.

Why is it that some people can deal with great trauma, and come out of the other end as inspiring and empathic human beings? The way I see it, a persons essence can only be "twisted into a malevolent thing" by the choices that they make. And yes, these choices may be dictated by the false personality, when the essence is buried under so many layers of buffers that its voice cannot be heard. Still, I think the essence of a person is something more fundamental and resilient than you propose here.

Maybe a more simple explanation/analogy would be: A 'soul' comes into this life with a vague sense of a mission and past experience. These determine what the essence IS. The essence quickly learns to hide itself, and creates a false construct (the personality) to deal with this level of existence. Sometimes this personality will take him/her on a journey far from what the essence really wanted. But all along, the essence is still singing the same tune, and it gets louder the more the personality strays from what the essence wants. Eventually this can lead to a state of bankruptcy.

I agree totally with your last statement.

 

[Chu]

The child is mostly essence or emotional being. We can't say what he 'is' but we can talk about what we observe. If I may use the term 'orientation', I say that most children are essentially benevolent. All qualities like kindness, love, creativity, helpfulness that we generally associate with a benevolent orientation are being expressed or they are still in a stage of being potential and will be expressed in one way or another pretty soon.

Most, probably. Unless they are born a psychopath. But I would think that then there is the issue of some people having a "weaker essence", or being a young soul, if we can call it that. Not having a solid enough essence that it can get twisted very easily by the environment and his/her predisposition. So for me it's hard to imagine exactly what "essence" means, since it is probably different for every individual, and it is usually so fragile to begin with that we can only see glimpses of it as we have realizations and see others develop their potential.

Great post, Buddy! Personally I enjoy reading you when you focus on being clear and write for "dummies" ;). It makes one feel like you are really writing for other people, not for yourself, and welcoming an actual interaction with other members.