Principles I'm Creating for Having a Journal

[Origins]

Here's my first one created just now - Psychological Reset Points (that's what journals /journalling has the potential for)

Firstly this was originally conceived of as Identity Reset Points but to be honest I don’t really understand what identity really means in the tangible sense, what make more operational sense to me is the relationship between psychology and the minds relationship to its own movements and corresponding behavioural developments.

Psychological Reset Points are not what you think they are, they can come from anything, a film, observing an animal from a distance, a feeling, an intuition, an observation, anything, they’re simply the outcome of insight developed from effectively processing a situation, and effectivity is merely measured by how many psychological outcomes were changed in ones perceived sense of self and or sense of boundaries within the architectures that make up that word self or what can be glued as a kind of Sense of Mind within Self of Mind made by the mind of consciousness.

To me it's a powerful mindset to have when creating a journal as well as being a powerful way to go about behavioural change because its behavioural change that’s developed from true insight, not just the desire of behavioural change. I notice that if I don’t stick the insight to the behaviour I didn’t even know I wanted to change and may only be as a result of the insight anyhow, I won’t be able to change the behaviour. This is simply because only memory has the capacity to re-orient automatic behaviour, without memory the behaviour will automatically occur without foresight or hindsight about what’s coming or what just happened. Memory coupled with insight then, given in-sight is to see-into or sight-within thus there’s also a kind of mindful emotional connotation, is the best movement forward. So if I wanted to quick smoking, sure I can have the memory “quit smoking” (not a smoker here by the way) but if I don’t not only have the imagery of the reasons for quitting smoking but also the insight into the imagery to give the imagery nuanced meaning, it’ll be much more difficult for the mind to send an impulse to the body to stop activating the same craving. 

The mind is constantly in communication with the body and vice versa, by understanding the mind better we can improve the communication we want the mind to have with the body and in doing so, move our body in the way we want say either towards smoking or away from smoking, whichever our choosing.

Psychological Reset Points are impositions on the present moment of creation, they impose from the actions of the observational intrigue you were enveloped by a will of change that corresponds to the insights generated from that preoccupation.

This isn’t insight from reflection as much as it is reflection of the right information in the right way. The right way is merely to the extent that insight is what flows from the river of perceptual nuance that should follow your motivation to perceive said unfoldment of potential wisdom. 

The unfoldment comes from as initially noted the effectiveness of processing the situation either in a new way or improved way. An example for the former relates to say a scientist in a laboratory looking at the same bacterial specimen under a different coloured dye or lens and an example of the latter can be simply inventing the means to look at specimen under a microscope. By understanding that the same relationship can be applied for how we examine our memories or just any phenomenon to derive personal psychological insight that enhances our existential positioning in time and space, we’ll not only be more incentivised to examine experiences, perceptions and so on a little more carefully and dutifully but also feel more confidence that there’s something to gain from it the more we devote ourselves to improving our ability here.

Insight of course is just the first part, the second aspect involves transforming said information into a shift in how one conceives of themselves in the mental realm and the boundaries that they unknowingly reinforce to govern the parameters of what they perceive as their psychic energy and what they would or might do with said psychic energy.

Let’s take the following Omaha Beach scene in Saving Private Ryan, one of millions of other scenes we could develop insight from. 

Films are a great way to simulate how we can look back on our own autobiographical memories to discover insight as well as how we can apply said observational reflection to our present perception outside of spontaneity, which can too, be its own source of wisdom.

Through the principle of contrast this very simple excerpt from a scene reveals so much information about the nature of how we have been interacting with existence to date and the separation between those actions and the new actions we can inform and reform ourselves with through close insightful observation. And it’s nuanced, it’s not easy to gather these insights and translate them into improved behavioural outcomes, especially long term changes that are based on highly nuanced perspectives not just bumper sticker perspectives.

Spend some time brainstorming and reflecting on all the ways that this Omaha Beach Scene reveals information about existence, human nature, the nature of life, comparisons with present culture and more, the wingspan of the potential insights you could draw from is comparatively limitless compared to what I could fathom given we have very different life experiences. Don't let those insights be automatic either, observe potential prejudices you might have and instead observe the following as if you've perhaps never even experienced reality ever so you're unable to impose those prejudices on what you see before you. That's meant merely as a practical measure though to avoid stifling creativity so don't let that mindset block the creativity you can utilise by reflecting on the scene based on your life experiences.

This is why you have to know how to break the habits of the former mind (regarding prejudice on the present moment), see the mind is primarily composed of habits in the realm of the Boundaries of the Mind, not in its pure essence nor not necessarily in its foundational psychological aspects, and those boundaries have been informational to the mind up to this point, thus you’re now entraining a new kind of boundary or even a series of new boundaries that will now unfold from the insights you draw from your examinations. This is where the employment of pattern streaming (explained near end of this paragraph) in the context of reinforcing the insights themselves will play a major part in implementing not only the direct behavioural outcomes of the insights themselves but also the boundaries of the insight outside those initially perceived. The realisation is that those former insights not only no longer live in reality but never even corresponded to reality, that I had something wrong about the way that I was responding to and perceiving reality, incorrect/misaligned memories (i.e. programming/conditioning is a kind of memory) loading into my consciousness to dominate the manner in which I was to perceive the present moment. Pattern streaming is the simple process of living in observational awareness combined with noticing as rawly as possible the patterns in our environment inclusive of what we phenomenologically interpret as our inner environment, pattern streaming then in the context of the realisations we garner from insight from memories and films like this for example is the process of doing exactly that but in light of noticing the patterns that run contrary to our newly discovered insights, especially with respect to our own behaviour so that we can make adaptations with greater ease towards our new desired end. Our insights may not be correct, but they're progressive from our former state that informs the experimental actions we could take to either validate or invalidate those insights through reality testing thus at the very least said insights can go through a learning feedback loop. Be sure to keep a separate journal for your insights so that you can compare your progress with those insights with the past.

Finally, The principle of contrast (as noted above) and I may bring up in the future has a few different tiers:

Case studies —> Simulation

Nature —> Analogy (meaning across all of nature, and this is based on the case studies)

Imagination —> Scenario Building (this last point describing the original point that any perspective lives in, it lives in imagination which is built based on the former steps and scenario building is based on)

Contrast is how our brain generates perspective on the present moment, light and those degrees of light allow us to by relative measure make sense of our visual surroundings, the contrasting sound between a bell and silence makes us here the sound of the bell more compared to if it was amidst other high pitched but not necessarily low pitched sounds, thus as it concerns how we exist in and categorise the contents in our minds of the present, we're entirely constrained by the contrast that's been loaded up in our brains at any given time. By controlling or at least having a learning feedback loop on the contrast that aids our progression versus contrast that doesn't, our minds will be able to perform simulations on the environment based on case studies that are actually of relatively higher importance. Case studies are at the top of the tier of best content that could be informing the minds perspective at any given moment, this is because our existence is mostly operational, we do things, we take actions, especially if you're a goal orientated person. So a great example to tie in the principle of contrast, Case Studies and higher goal setting would be simply pre-loading loading the mind with as much content relative to our actual goals relative to being case study examples. I mean, the closer to the goal is more or less "good enough" but case studies often inform actions and our goals are often achieved as a consequence of our actions, so for example, if I wanted to win a basketball championship I wouldn't just watch random basketball games I'd study in a very specific way both winners and losers here, why they won and why they lost move to the results former and away from the results of the latter. From here you could expand this analogously on an incremental level, moving then to study Ice Hockey championships, Football Championships, World Wars, further away now to successful businesses versus unsuccessful businesses, expanding the analogy all the way to the relationships between successful species and unsuccessful species on the planet to even cultural memetic movements say around Climate Change and Animal Rights. This is the essence of the next step, Nature --> Analogy, from here we move to the imagination phase because now we're confident the mind has been filled with the right content to begin scenario building and simulating from there which would otherwise happen automatically outside of our strategic manoeuvring here but because we've tailor made our content we have automatic simulations that are more related to our goals. This is an extension of the psychological technique of priming. 

Films are actually case studies then depending on your scope on life at the time, because on a subconscious level that’s what the mind is interpreting them as which is why some people are more vulnerable than others when it comes to confusing them with aspects of reality, so they’re at the first tier, the difference here is that films are also providing you with the simulation, so there's not as much cognitive effort as there is with simulating a novel or composing simulations based on sparse data points about a particular real life scenario you have to reconfigure in your mind to make sense. Further films can be an interesting way to explore the relationship and overlap between imagination and autobiographical memory because by say imagining the films in alternate ways, say imagining a scene play out differently, that’ll put perspective on the film regarding the fluidity by which you can entertain it in your imagination as well as put perspective on your own memories and their perceived rigidity outside the scope of playing with alternate outcomes. This process of imagining alternate outcomes for the past will be a great cognitive skill as it concerns imagining alternate outcomes play out for the future, something which can be an extremely useful creative tool when processing an experience through journalling or simply journalling about our observations.

Edited November 27, 2020 by Origins

[Origins]

Just reminding myself of this journal.

I've gotta make it a habit to read the best of my journal entries (ideally daily) so that the best content I produce remains fresh in my mind, including the way I think and feel about things so that I'm steering myself towards progression as much as possible and less and less away from older forms materialising in this flat-world existence. 

This way new content has the highest chance of building on and extending older content as opposed to being beneath it to any capacity. It makes a lot of sense to have this as a goal. In that sense, this journal, albeit useful, needs redesigning relative to the philosophy I'm building. 

Edited April 6, 2021 by Origins