Should we collaborate?

I never do, and why? unless in a Developmental Community, with a shared epistemology

Self-Determining Epistemology— My Process for Finding Answers

Background:

Epistemology is about knowing and learning. What is a self-determining epistemology? It is one where I am a primary examiner, researcher, and interpreter of truth, over time, and with increasing validated and depth understanding. A short description of that process is intended here, not a way to find ultimate universal truths.

As a young entry student at UC Berkeley, in 1964, we were put in a year-long course called How to Learn. It was a most unusual idea in a university setting. It was based on Mortimer J. Adler's books and methods he initiated at Columbia and a precursor to The Great Books Series of St. Johns.   At Berkeley, the intention was to teach us to be primary source investigators before we accepted anything as truth and reality. This was contrasted to being a secondary or tertiary seeker of answers.

A primary source is one with an original document/image/ experience, the results of an experiment we conduct, a first-hand account, or our own creative work.  A secondary source is something written about or using other’s primary interpretations. Working with others’ outputs. It always has a third party separating us from the immediacy of the experience.  A tertiary source is often offered in the context of a collection of primary and secondary sources as a survey of a field. A Self-Determined epistemology is a primary sourced process but with a few additions. It is conducted in a Developmental Community in a Living Lineage Developmental School where the process of seeking answers is infused with self-development (reflection and personal inner work is at the forefront.)

Premises:

Learning begins with the inner work necessary for primary processes.  I committed to this groundwork as I deeply experienced Western and Eastern inner development, in my late twenties and early thirties as I engaged in wisdom traditions. It brought a foundational way to understand.  It is developmental and uses the sourcing mind, which asks different questions. Where and how do I acquire ideas and thoughts? What state of being are we in as we engage? Our state is defines what we can consider, which determines what we can see, experience, and how we make meaning from sensory exposure.

Mindset: Which mind we are centered in, as we assess, determines what we can see. If we are running on automatic, we see through a fixed mind that reacts the same way each time. We are machines. Like sleepwalking in our reactions! We fear what we always fear; we have the same interpretations we always have and react the same way.

When we move up to a sensitive mind rather than a mechanical, machine mind, we are aware of others and need to be different in some settings. Some persons never activate the sensitive mind, staying in a mechanical mind. When the sensitive mind is activated, we are connected to others and feel invited to seek belonging, be inclusivity of ideas, and notice our own emotional attachments and identifications. We can be more aware.  But for one to get beyond a sensitive mind, we need a third force or system, not a third party, but to get into a Conscious Mind. We see what system(s) we are nested in, and what we affect and are affected by.  This includes when we are not only in a state of mind but can see it happening, in the momenr. And not only is that happening, but we can choose our state when conscious. That is what is needed for doing long-thought work delivering on our Time-Binding place in the ecosystem.

Long-thought Thinking is the name I invented for my lifetime mode of intentionally getting smarter on a single subject (or a few) of significance, to planetary processes, social understanding, and living systems, every time I put out a next idea on the subject. I do this by forbidding myself to spew the same thoughts in the same way I did before, as though I had the answer. I don’t pull out past writings, keynotes, podcast notes, or references. I  start with the upcoming setting, audience, times, and places, never locking it down from the past, but pushing to see what I could not see before.

For example, at an earlier time, forty or more years ago, I understood Regeneration at a shallower level, which I see in others now new to the path. I evolved my understanding by working at it from experience.

• 1990 Regenerative: Innovate new base material, technology or thinking used in products or behavior  (New- material level understanding)

• 1997 Regenerative: This enables gradients of renewal such that both potential and ongoing viability and value are achieved from earth to earth. ( new- gradient level understanding)

• 1999 Regenerative: to create a new existence by bringing something alive to those who experienced it as having little or no spirit. (new - living systems)

• 2005 creating a new source for life in something, we take something to a higher order and organization above what it has been.  It’s beyond the old thing made new. (new- evolving experience)

• 2021 Evolve capacity for Essence expression in Systems Actualization (i.e. the soul works for its own evolution evolving its capacity to do so by imaging working of next systems it is embedded it; we regenerate from Essence)

Hopefully, you can see from these my own evolving understanding of how long-thought thinking works over 2 decades because I work to see more of how soul development and living systems work. And I will continue to work to get smarter as long as I have a body. I also work to be unattached with certainty to each revelation. When I share, I now share the developmental process for others to do this long-thought process for themselves, and my answers as untrustworthy. This process makes us able to become a time-binder and to have more of us who are Time Binders (increasing wisdom over time but building on wisdom emerging).

Humility: Why is this long-thought process necessary to Living Systems thinking and finding deeper answers?  Nothing is mine to pronounce as a universal definition of or to change the definition and make True. I am in a lineage tradition, where understanding occurs through my own and other’s long thought process (deepening understanding over our lifetime with growing Intelligence.) Each person needs to be in this process for themselves. We need each person to come to their own understandingthrough reflected experience. Therefore, we can be in a Time-Binding process, evolving humans’ understanding of living systems, as a species, which is the  Nature and work of humans as a role in the ecosystems. All else is ego, hubris, and arrogance.

Pop Theories: Because of all the ego challenges, it is best to work within Lineage communities with generations and centuries of validating epistemology by primary sources. Collaborations trigger the ego and, without development, we revert to a sensitive mind. Therefore, I do not work with schools of thought that reference modern human theories or existed for less than 100 years existence (e.g., popular ecology, popular psychology, pop spirituality, pop science [i.e., fragmented, non-developmental).  

Authoritarian epistemology: Avoid accepting ideas as final truths, from experts and schools that use authority behavioral epistemologies. They violate self-determining experience for a personal primary sourced knowing experience. I also don’t offer answers to others, putting them into a secondary sourced learning experience.  Knowledge, not understanding, is only sought and fought over with authoritarian designs. No one can transfer understanding; only untested knowledge as secondary or tertiary sources.

Anytime we work with a process that puts us into secondary or tertiary sourcing, we are falling out of our most important work.  Losing consciousness of our place as developing Time-binders with increasing ableness in Long Thought Thinking. It is the source of our evolving Soul. The recurring development of Consciousness results in Time Binding Contributions in our long-thought work resulting in energy fields for regenerative thinking answers vs the low-quality answers by direct work.