Our Name: The Underlying Themes
There are certain themes that seem to be at the basis of all change, in spiritual or relational or therapeutic or physical/physiological or emotional arenas. These themes have certain ideas that run in and out of, as well as through, them. The themes being statements like “Truth over Comfort” or “Growth results through opening oneself non-anxiously to Suffering and/or Wonder.”
Another such theme may be “Honesty and Humiliation are step one towards profound paradigm shifts.”
Jordan Peterson talks of shedding the 95% of you that is deadwood and the revolutionary shift of living out of the core 5% of yourself. So what are the ideas at the heart of these themes, underneath helping others find their place and purpose in the unfolding story of themselves, their community, and this world? What ideas will be foundational as The IDEAS Institute brings their talents and gifts to bear within this communal mutual invitation into the activities of their lives and minds?
Intersubjectivity
Intersubjectivity is a term describing the process of energy and meaning moving between, and being shared, by two or more people, where the psychological weight of each involved person comes to bear on the minds and identities of all involved.
As multiple consciousnesses interact with each other, each individual person then internalizes the interaction and integrates it into their self identity. The “We” and the “Me’ are constantly redefining each other and inviting an evolving created shared meaning. Human beings are fundamentally in an internal self-relationship with themselves about the outer relationships they are experiencing. Someone’s ability to have a robust and non-anxious self-relationship with themself about their interactions with the world around them, holding their internal and external self-views and identity with an open hand (flexible boundaries), allows a maximum level of positive effect for the individual and the group.
Differentiation
Differentiation is one’s ability to be a full self, fully connected within relationship, not needing to diminish one in order for the other to exist.
There is intrapsychic and interpersonal differentiation co-occurring back and forth. In differentiation, one can allow all the parts of themself to exist simultaneously without needing to disconnect from any one part themself to accept their entire being and allowing the totality of all their distinct parts equal space and existence. Also, one does not need anything outside of them to be any other way than how it is, for them to still be them. It is an absence of relational levers and pulleys. In differentiation, a distinctness exists where we can distinguish ourselves from the people we are connected to, without emotional or relational fusion existing to the point of identity violence.
Engaging
Another idea that is fundamental to change and growth is that of Movement. Risk and courage are needed to change intention into action.
The Bible poetically states that faith without works is no faith at all. Taken as an overarching metaphor, our thoughts and ideas are impotent unless they are put into action and motion. The deepest parts of us that need untangling will require moving into terrifying decisions of exposure and humiliation, within and without. The ability to embrace an expanding uncertainty in the middle of an increasing clarity is key to finding a larger version of oneself, the ability to chase confusion. One can only find their true being when they extend themselves outward into their internal and external worlds. We become as we engage.
Active
Richard Rohr describes the Trinity as a divine benevolent relational Flow, of which all of creation is created out of and held within. As human beings, we are perpetually in a flow within ourselves, and are in the Flow of the universe as well.
Daniel Siegel discusses that this is how our minds work best, when one intentionally keeps their mind’s relationship with the organ of their brain in flow, where they vigilantly keep themselves from descending into either the shores of chaos or rigidity, Between those shores is the river that he terms the “FACES” flow, stating that one needs to embrace flexibility, adaptability, coherence, empathy, and stability in order to maintain a constant open-ended balance of mystery and focus. We are an internal active system, moving about and within external active systems, constantly relationally embodied.
The last of the ideas that create a foundation to the themes of change is that of Systems. Buddhism sees all of life as an organism where everything is interconnected. Systems theory in psychology focuses on the interdependence of individuals in a group to help understand and optimize the movements of a group.
Systems
Individuals are in perpetual states of seeking homeostasis within the system of themselves, as well as in the groups they participate in, as the group itself is seeking homeostasis apart from the individual participants and their specific systems. The universe is constantly seeking to balance its energy. The more and more quantum theory reveals, like the idea of quantum entanglement, the more we see how systemic the world really is, how inter-affecting it all is, interdependent at its core. From the macro dimensional universal level, all the way down to the micro subatomic particle level. Add this to what scientists are currently learning about neurology, as well as psychologists and the subjects of attachment, along with places like HeartMath and their studies on how people’s magnetic fields affect each other, studies in the relationship of one’s EKG results (heart) and another’s EEG results (brain). The universe is systemic, everything is affecting everything else. We are systemic, not linear. We are process, not content.