circles of gentleness

experiences are gentle ripples on the thresholds of our self
welcome back, i hope pleasures from your trip are still vibrant enough to give a positive hue to settling 'back', although the settling is not a return but is still moving 'forward'... well, that's how unhelpful i find language...:) it's much more interesting to make sense of real life...

i find that any decision, any position one may decide to take, i.e. any transition point in life can be sketched as a line (direction) which crosses a circle (range of possibilities). and the diagonal that crosses a circle in two cardinal points is a set of directions.

so when in a central position (asking a question which has a range of answers), one has a choice of direction: it does not mean that any given problem is just black and white with only two outputs but instead, that two lines of approaches / directions are at hand and within one direction, degrees of modulation are possible. opposite directions has always been represented as +/- but here i would rather avoid simplistic interpretations (positive vs negative or male vs female) and present this opposition in such terms: + represents reinforcement through harmonic resonance, it is the principle of positive feedback whereas - represents interference, a variation of signal which is in the long run 'destructive' in its non-comforming (non-confirming) effect, i.e. negative feedback.

you see, shades of grey start to appear and form a spectrum of interactions. so even on a stark checkerboard of opposites, there is hope...
back to real life situations, we find gentleness in balance, in comfort and harmony. and from this central position in the circle, one can position each thought or each action in degrees of intensity towards the extremety of the circle, so that each point/decision within the circle is defined by x and y axes with positions further from the centre representing greater modulation / velocity, that is away from the gentle way.

so, you get it now, one can never remain totally central; this would be boring and predictable, somehow a denial of responsibility or interest in relation to the outside / our environment. but in every choice of direction, there is a direct line to follow and there are degrees of appropriateness, from the gentle to the extreme, from coherence to emotional chaos. (a more realistic representation would be to use a sphere so that positioning is defined by a set of three parameters but let us keep this sketch simple and look at the componants of our two dimentional circle of possibilities):
the compass is the self at any point in time. the circle is that act of considering the moment, of considering options within the moment.
i would like to postulate the vertical line (north south direction) is time, a constant force pushing forward (N), inviting a constant motion in time informed by what happened in the South, in the past. this is not a spacial representation. the horizontal line (W-E), is internal, that is it represents the exchange of information between left and right hemisphere of the brain. harmony within this parameter happens when [data] returned by the [right brain] after sounding out [memory] reinforces data forwarded by the [left brain]. in greater details, incoming information is passed through the senses and is distributed in the brain in order to 'resonate' information present in the form of memory, which is either reinforced, confirmed or contradicted and diffused.

let us now postulate that the gentle way, as described by eastern philosophy, is the central position which offers the best range of possibilities out of the whole circle, does not enclose us in biais... so that one lives fully in the now, in awareness of the political environment and of one's state and emotional reactions. from the optimal (i am here purposefully avoiding the western misinterpretation of 'perfection' as absolute) position, modulations are caused by fields of attraction, magnets of activity which divert us away from 'magnetic north' and takes every motion forward slightly off skelter. the 'magnet' is made up of belief systems enforced by patterns of dysfunctional behaviour.
the above described dysfunction would mean that our example model would live in the now and take every decisions while being displaced from the optimum central position. so for instance, an individual who tends to resent visiting their past (lack of confidence in one's experience and one's emotions) and live in the rigidity of a present informed solely by external stimuli whose absolute and perdictable existance is solid proof of one's beliefs and a justification of one's thought processes. this example shows a predominance of left brain activity while also rejecting the effect of time that is the benefits of experience, a resentment of the past which also affects one's attitude to the future, i.e. change. we will represent this within our circle of possibilities with A', the alternative to the central A where A'=-x,-y. nubers on both axes are in the negative as they interfere with the principle of reinforcement and forward motion. now we can safely state that once one's dysfunction is set (through coherent reinforcement), the same degree of variation will apply to further motion / decision making, affecting one's path with every 'insignificant' moment so that the 'modulation' and the dyscrepancies reinforce themselves. by always turning left at the crossroads, you will soon discover you are running in circles. these are the loops of compulsion. A' is consistantly kept away from A by the use of fragmenting walls, that is by securing defined zones of comfort. this illusion of comfort (in one's intellectual behaviour) and the presence of walls (psycological term fragmentation belongs to the discourse of the ego, together with transfer/displacement, that is denial) is what, i believe, anthony describes as enclosures.

the current political situation is not 'crazy' as such, it is not even surprising since all parties are coherent and predictable in their positioning. yet, the dispute over ownership of land and flow of resources remains bound to the extreme periphery of a circle by existing political positions and the tensions this generates which all, consistently, push/pull away from the central gentle position never considered an option. (so the us (with britain tagging along) will always hide their resentment of failed dominion and their aggression behing the fallacy of peace keeping and war on terror. they are not friendly, they are not invading to help, and we all know that fear, however disguised, is the tool for subjection and colonisation. terror-ism has to be another -ISM american fad).
i suppose that attachement/locking (in)to such an extreme positioning is what you would call a situation of enclosure (one strongly believes they have no choice and so justify a dysfunctional decision). i find interesting that enclosure emplies a retreat inwards, that one is being bound, closed in from within by the very walls one constructs in order to control their path. ironically, i find that enclosures (if represented in space / in relation to the self) are not locking us in (into deeper patterns of behaviour) and instead pushes us outwards, towards extremes of behaviours, away from our inner sense of purpose (see also the heartmath research for instance: http://www.heartquotes.net/coherence.html).

and i will clarify here, that this discrepancy is due to thinking in two opposed planes of existance:
the behavioural patterns which lead us to enclosure are manifestations in the Symbolic Order where reality is inverted so that behaviours which bind us in mentally (bound into repeating such patterns), in the Order of the Real, are actually leading us outwards, toward extremes of behaviour which alienate us from our coherent selves, from our inner sense of purpose which i believe is imprinted in the architecture of our body-mind-energy form. the vicious circle of self abuse and self-esteem hacking is closed... compulsive negative feedback as willful destruction - in a way which is hardly conceivable (hence pre-emptying chances of resolution), since the 'vicious cycle' pans both Symbolic and Real Orders of a 'fragmented' self.

the gentle way is always whispered by the heart, not barked out by the controlling mind.
the gentle way lies in listening and learning to hear.
sndsukinspook