Showing posts with label self-trust. Show all posts

Day 122: Throwing Myself in the Deep End

I have been observing an interesting point that was briefly mentioned in one of the EQAFE interviews of the "Parenting - Perfecting the Human Race" series in myself: that I have the tendency to first want to 'know' how to do something or get an explanation of how something is done, before I am willing to develop the point for myself. I have very much ingrained this pattern from my schooling years where this approach is how things are 'taught' in school - where you are first told and explained the 'rules' you have to follow and only once you have memorized the guidelines and the 'knowledge' part - do you have you put it into practice. This approach of 'teaching' also limits how things are done, because everyone follows the same format, you are already constrained in your expression through the instructions you are taught to follow. An interesting approach would be, for instance, to give children a task to do and to have each one have their own approach, their own perspective, their own style - and from there suggestions can be given in how things can be done more effectively for each individual student.

And so - for myself - every time I am faced with doing something new, I'll have this idea and perception that I can't do it, just because no-one has given me any instructions to follow. And within this, it is clear that I have very much defined self-trust in relation to knowledge - where 'I trust myself' means 'I am confident that I possess the knowledge in terms of how this is done and that I can effectively carry out the instructions contained within it' - lol - sounds quite robotic, right, lol. It's like I first need to be 'fed' a program or a script, so that I can just mindlessly follow the program or script in actual doing.

And, what I have found when I do push myself to just do it - just start somewhere, throw myself into the deep end - I can simply evaluate what I have done and from there, I can see for myself where I require to take a different approach, or where I can improve something and how to improve it in order to get a better result. And it is actually in those moments that self-trust comes in - because it is the seeing of what requires to change that is not based on knowledge or information that requires self-trust. Obviously, there is also always the point of being able to ask for assistance from someone who has already developed the particular skill or who has experience with the particular task to be able to specify one's own application - where, one can make one's own assessment and then ask another to share their perspective as well - and then the points can be merged and transformed into a plan for improvement.

And these attempts and try-outs don't have to be a dreadful thing - one determines this for oneself - when one can walk through the fear in breath and simply be here within and as the experiment, one can easily enjoy oneself - and even in making the assessment and making a plan for improvement. None of these points are inherently 'dreadful' or 'scary' or 'negative' - yet it's how we've often come to define them through our schooling experience - where it is strongly linked to 'not being good enough' or 'doing it wrong' or 'failing'.

So - here some perspective when one sees this pattern in oneself - to consider not placing trust in 'knowledge', but in and as ourselves - to simply walk here, in the moment from a starting-point of self-support. It's not about proving oneself to others and it's not about getting praise - it's about doing it for oneself and to discover who we are when we walk through our self-imposed limitations, fears and resistances!

To start this process, one can find support on http://lite.desteniiprocess.com, which is a free course where one is supported by a buddy - or one can go to http://forum.desteni.org where a group of people will welcome you and be ready to assist!
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Day 15: Shattering Myself To Pieces – Part 1


SledgeHammerGlassYesterday the point opened up of how I tend to – whenever I see that there is a part of me that I am unable to trust – shatter myself to pieces completely in the idea that if I can’t trust myself entirely then I should not trust myself at all. Because often – I will only realise after a while that what I believed was a stable and trustworthy point in myself and my application – was not truly so. And then I go into the fear that: well, if I thought that I was trustworthy in relation to that point and it turned out not to be so – then what is to say I am really trustworthy in any other point? And then – within that singular moment – it’s like I take a sledge hammer to my self-trust and shatter it to pieces – where I then place myself in a position where I have to start all over again and re-establish my self-trust in relation to all points in my world – re-building my foundation of self-trust from scratch, from which I am able to stand and walk.

The point opened up through the word ‘falsification’ and falsification is basically a method proposed by Karl Popper in the philosophy of science as a way to rule out false theories. What he proposes is that one just conjures up random theories of how things work – and then put the theory up to the toughest tests and see if it survives. This stands in contrast with the method of confirmation where the idea is to make predictions based on your theory and finding as many points of evidence in the physical world in support of this view or theory, so that – let’s say if the prediction you make based on your theory comes true a 1000 times, you can be pretty certain that the theory is true or confirmed. Popper, with his falsificationism, suggests instead that we should actively attempt to falsify our theories. Meaning that – we should make predictions based on our theories and if they don’t turn out to be true – then the theory must be rejected, but if the prediction does come true, it doesn’t mean that the theory gains in reliability, because, for instance – no matter how many times we see a white swan – the spotting of a white swan cannot count as evidence for the statement ‘All swans are white’ – because a black swan could just always be right around the corner. However, spotting a black swan is definite evidence that the statement ‘All swans are white’ is not true and should be rejected.

So – just to give you some background and also in terms of tying it in with how the same system I am working with is manifested in various ways in our world, such as in science, for instance – where in search for ‘truth’ and ‘knowledge’ the exact same method is used of simply rejecting an entire point, when a part of it is proven to be false.

Falsification, of course, is rather an extreme way of dealing with points – and scientists don’t actually work according to this principle, because it would just take way too long to make any progress if, each time a part of the data doesn’t fit the theory, the entire theory must be rejected. And in the same way – within myself – it doesn’t make sense to slam my entire foundation of self-trust to pieces because I saw that part of it was not real. In science – scientists will rather take the theory apart and see where things went wrong so that the theory turned out to be inconsistent with some of the data. The theory will then be adjusted in light of the new information and from there it can be put to the test again. So – that is what I saw I can apply within myself as well – where, instead of just undermining my self-trust completely – I investigate my self-trust in all its aspects – check which points are valid and in which points the self-trust was not valid. Then – I can investigate why the self-trust was not absolute within the points where it was invalidated and re-align myself in such a way that I am able to trust myself within those points. So – it is like taking my self-trust apart just for a moment, investigating the invalid parts – correcting them – and putting it back together again. This is a far more effective method than just slamming the whole thing to pieces and then having to start over from scratch – re-establishing my self-trust in each piece individually all over again.

Within my next blog-post – I will take a closer look at why this tendency of using the method of falsification exists within myself. Thank you for reading.
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