When I was in high school, I used to go to the roller rink a lot. It was fun, easy to learn the basics and plenty of room to practice the fancy stuff. I took a lot of dates skating because it gave me time to get to know someone without wasting time evaluating what I was attempting to converse about on dates. In college, I had an assigned parking place which was very cool but the gym was across campus. The long two-mile walkway was paved so I got a used pair of in-line skates to travel the distance without needing to drive and re-park. This worked great on campus, and I had years of practice, but skating was very dangerous on city sidewalks and streets. Way too many rocks, junk, and pot-holes to threaten safe travel. Post graduation I sold the skates.
From my sample story above, do you understand how influence generates and shapes how we humans’ function? Easy to say that the skating events were all random, and that would be correct, intellectually. The question is, did all my various skating experiences generate an influence? All the experience skating would cumulatively be stored in my brain and support a preference that would be available if a need appeared. When a real threat from skating arose, I abandoned the sport. Most people will not accept the events as influenceable because we are geared to absolutes and think that is how life is managed. We have all experienced a change in plans and preferences due to weather, traffic, accidents and even arguments. And most of us have preferences in food, colors, events, sports and friends.
I reported in an earlier blog that children are born understanding first level abstractions. They can anticipate action from a sequence of events. An abstraction is anything that hides other functions and provides a simpler interface to deal with. Is this not the nature of influence? Making a purchase is a second level abstraction. The complex banking system and all the processing in producing the goods are abstracted away. Parents teach their children the concepts of value and what they need to do to obtain. That is how they get awareness to second level abstraction. They are learning about what influences them and how to implement it in action.
Most of my blogs last year were about what conditions affected my health as a child and what skills I needed to develop to turn that around. At around 4 ½ years of age I recall hearing, from another room, a doctor telling my grandmother that I would be OK and would most likely live at least 40 years before illness took me. Motivation to secure skill in second level abstraction; what do I need to do to change that prediction. By five I was learning to alter outcome by influence. I was not special but I could adapt. You can change everything, not quickly but you need influence to direct it.
Chriss
A question to find more questions in your meditations in June:
How is it that, exposed to the same information, different people absorb different messages, and drew different conclusions?
I have had several questions on Meditation Practice and why I suggest short meditations. Here is a chat to address the issue and if you have a Spiritual Practice with lots of long meditations, don’t give it up. In this series was are addressing special goals having to do more with structure than states.
