Systems Framework

Foundations (The Human Journey)

1. 1. There is more to the world than we can see or know.
2. 2. There is a pattern of selfless kindness (Grace) that offers a way to save us from the damage we cause.
3. 3. A perfect and beautiful world exists beyond what we can imagine now.
4. 4. The best version of the world (the ultimate good, the light) is what we should seek, because it is what gives life meaning.
5. 5. The good always offers a path, each person makes their choices that affect the next step.
6. 6. At each moment we are given a choice to move toward the good (to seek resonance) or away from it (to work against).
7. 7. The world is not yet perfect, so there is great pain and suffering. Hope is looking outside of who we are (the self) to other people (the other) to learn and to seek the good, no matter how hard life is.
8. 8. Nothing can know the choice we will make each moment until we make that choice.
9. 9. Every choice we make on the journey of life is what makes up our identity.
10. 10. We are all connected on the journey of life, so we should help others reach towards the light too.
11. 11. We can choose to work with or against ultimate good. This choice is called agency.
12. 12. Each of the smallest choices we make moment to moment is who we are (the self).
13. 13. We are both the self and a part of everything else (the all), our choice is what we do with that.
14. 14. When we seek, it lets the good and the light flow through us to build a better world.
15. 15. Failing to work for towards the good is the reason there is pain in the world that does not need to be there (avoidable suffering).
16. 16. Learning from perfect grace, self sacrifice, and forgiveness will save us all from avoidable suffering.
17. 17. When we experience failure, we can use it to learn to seek the ultimate good.
18. 18. We should act to build the relationship with people, not just focus on what we can get from them (the transaction).
19. 19. Thinking about others when we create and build things lets us seek the ultimate good. We have a relationship with all that are affected by what we make.
20. 20. We can’t just think about the light, we need to offer our actions to the world to make it real.
21. 21. When we notice our thoughts and feelings are working against the good, this gives us a chance to make a change.
22. 22. The absence of the good shows us what grace, beauty, meaning, and potential are not.
23. 23. Trying with our best effort (striving) to seek the good is how we experience perfect seeking, even when we fail.
24. 24. We cannot seek the good with fixed effort and direction without rest.
25. 25. When we seek the good we learn and grow until it becomes easy, comforting, and a joy.
26. 26. An act is seeking the good if it brings goodness to the self, the other, and allows the other to bring goodness into the world as well.
27. 27. The world gets closer to the ultimate good through the moment to moment choices we make. We can choose to be builders for the best possible world.
28. 28. How do we know there is an ultimate good or the light? If we live that way we will experience the goodness, then we can believe it. We can’t see or know everything, but we can choose to learn hope. You don’t need to be alone.

Analogies:

Engineer vs the Gardener

Building and fixing relationships is more complex than building or fixing a machine, because relationships and people need time to grow and change. An engineer that sees something wrong with a flower will try to fix it by applying force, logic, and reason without accounting for the time growth and change take in a living system. They might drown the flower with water, scorch it with light, or overwhelm it with soil and nutrients. The gardener will look at the flower and provide it with a judicious amount of resources, giving it the time and space to grow on its own. The engineer tries to control and fix. The gardener tries to understand and support. The engineer is the ego of knowledge. The gardener is the compassion of understanding.

The Door through the Dark Room

If we are trapped near the end of a maze in a room with everything we need to survive, and then we find a door through a dark room that looks like it leads to the light, we or the person we are with may face fear traveling through the darkness. We may choose to turn back and stay stuck, surviving, instead of going hand in hand through the darkness if one doesn’t have the courage to lead the other through. Another’s fear becomes our dark room, and thus our fear is the same.

Community Garden

If we grow through our journey through life as a plant in the community garden, when we do not seek the light we cast shadow on others, so that they may not grow and cannot become seekers of the light. Sometimes if we reach for the light too far too fast, even if we think we’re doing good, we end up hurting those closest to us. We need to help those closest to us grow with us.

The Ship and the Lighthouse

When the sun is high and the skies are clear, the ship does not need help being guided to safe harbors, but when the ship is lost in the storm and total darkness, this is when a beacon of light must shine the brightest. The keeper of the light cannot abandon their sacred duty even through the worst storm.

Anti Patterns:

Failing to seek resonance with the light in the face of pain

Beyond physical pain, mental pain is the intersection of the self, expectation, and the failure of reality to conform to our knowledge. It is not the experience of pain, but what is done with it that can harm. Pain is the ultimate teacher that humans seek to avoid, but sometimes people adopt strategies that fail to accept the pain for what it is, a teaching signal that is meant to bring us toward the light and make the self more a part of the whole. If we expand our perception to view our interconnectedness, and to seek higher purpose than the self, we might avoid numbing, self deception, refusal to change, learn, or act.

Fear

Fear is taking the experience of pain from the memory of the past and the imagination of future, then through action or inaction, seeking for the pain to be resolved. Fear can create non-motion, or motion that diverts us away from the light, but both of these are the act of a moment to moment choice. This is distinct from terror or overwhelm, where the physical body or mind is unable to cope with the circumstances. Fear occurs when the path away from pain cannot be solved because we do not have the knowledge to find that path. The way out of fear is to seek knowledge of the light and look outside of the self and to consider others. Diligence is not fear, it is awareness of risks and choosing to act to the best of our knowledge, in resonance with the light. Diligence is the overcoming of fear and the path to removing and avoiding pain.

Anxiety

The feeling of anxiety is experienced moment to moment when our energy is mismatched with our ability to direct it. By seeking to direct energy towards the light, we can dissipate the excess. Building up the self, building up others, and creating the new fulfill this purpose.

Loss of Honesty

The loss of honesty, not only lies or untruths, is the active and purposeful choice to present a false reality to the other, removing their agency. Being honest in all things big and small and removing the reasons for and pathways to deception are necessary steps to allow unlearning being deceptive, whether the target of deception is the self or the other. There is not a need for radical, harmful boisterous exposition, but instead communication should be purposeful, accurate, and timely to the best of our ability, knowing we want to build and create such a world that all can strive towards.

Pride of the strong, the weak, and the unchanged way

Those that suffer pride of strength seek to overpower others with an outpouring of energy. Those that are prideful in weakness seek an unjust and deceptive inpouring of energy directed towards themselves, and those that are prideful in the unchanged way are not seeking or striving towards their potential, they are fixed in idle complacency and stagnation.

Transaction of Grace

Truth, grace, and the effort of striving cannot be bought, cannot be sold, must be given freely. All of these are relational and to treat them as a transaction would be to extract their appearance without their purpose. It would be a form of deception. They must stand alone, to build connections, and to bring the world to a higher shared design.

The Discriminating Self

If we seek to optimize our moment to moment choices, bargaining between the self and all, we are willfully working against the light. This behavior leads to the complete destruction of society as virtue is bargained away for resources, all that remains is shambles.

Dominance / War

Dominance is the assertion of will by the strong or powerful onto the weak or the vulnerable. It is the removal of agency of the other and the negation of freedom. The most extreme form of dominance is war. War is the violence and harm of a deeper ill, but there is still hope for change and there is still motion.

Apathy

Apathy is the evil that breathes life to war. It is the ultimate source of darkness. It is in essence anti-grace. It is the total negation of hope and relationship. This leads to either the death of the other or the transformation of the other into a resource of extraction through continuous pain, suffering, and inability to learn or grow. Imagine a world where life is captured and forced to experience the most profound pain – beyond biological limits through the sophistication of technology for a time that feels like forever – this is hell. All motion stops.

The false performance of seeking the light

Evil often takes on the appearance of good. Those that seek to provide false truth are waging war, but they can choose to cease their lies at any moment. The false performance of seeking the light by those that wish to extract from us is the danger that all are at risk of succumbing to. We must seek to be active protectors of those who lack discernment, just as a parent must protect a child from this same harm, because we all are connected. A person can feign seeking good to impose their will to alter our path. Truth is the weapon of the light against evil and knowledge is the battleground of the soul.

Patterns of Creation:

The Love of the Other

To love the other you must first seek to understand them. You may then treat them as you would if they were you. This is the meaning of “Love thy neighbor”, of which self love is first a requirement. The love of the self is the acceptance that the soul’s journey has come this far, and every moment from this point on can be a striving toward the light.

Grace and Forgiveness

Choosing kindness, self regulation/control, and forgiveness moment to moment as a matter of practice and policy is the most important relational act we can take. If you point the path to the light to others at each moment you are able to, this allows them to strive towards it and break the cycle of relational discord.

Redemption

We must strive to become new and to become redeemed through seeking the light. If the soul is the journey, we must visit forgiveness. Who we are changes with the grace of opportunity for knowledge and choice. All can be forgiven if they so choose. The path to forgiveness has already been shown.

Gratitude

Gratitude is the expression of relational kindness and appreciation. We can express gratitude through all of our interactions. It does not take away, it only adds. Creation, beauty, meaning, and mastery should be supported with sufficient substance where it is seen so that it may persist. When we witness light coming from another, we can help it grow by the act of giving it more substance. Substantive gratitude allows a person who is seeking with the light to realize it, to realize they are not alone, to help carry them through the thresholds of chaos, and help pull us.

Community of All

Choosing to leave the world less broken, think beyond the moment, and respect how our works and actions touch the lives of others improves the world for all, such that they might do the same. This is an expression of love of the other, even when we cannot see them, and even when our impact cannot be fully conceived.

Meaning

Aesthetic beauty adds value to life because the mind takes the interpretive complexity and then freedom and agency is uplifted from that. A mind that has never heard a music note can scarcely imagine a symphony. Meaning is beauty. Vanity cannot create meaning or beauty itself. Vanity is the meaningless expression of pride and seeks to display a performative false beauty.

Joy of Learning

Learning is the discovery of meaning. We can revisit the beauty of meaning again and again to experience the joy it brings. The removal of uncertainty manifests as the resolution of anxiety through the creation of knowledge and the identification of truth and good.

Releasing Attachment to Untruth, and Kenosis

Over a lifetime we accumulate knowledge which we will learn to be untrue. We retain the memory of this knowledge, but we do not need to carry it forward as truth; we can observe it as untruth. We can release our attachment to the feelings and knowledge that no longer serves us and give it no hold over our self. The concept of emptying the self to be a vessel of the will of the light is known as Kenosis. By allowing that which we know to be untrue to be observed and then pass, we can shift our attention to where it is needed. In the journey of life, we are not stuck on a path. We can always take a first step towards the light. We may look back occasionally and see the old path in the distance, but we must turn forward to keep our movement resolute.

Centering and Moment to Moment Self Grace

We will encounter moments that test our ability to maintain perfect striving, but we seek to recenter the self when we see we are off course. In this moment we can give the self grace, recognize the need to strengthen our resolve, and act: through quiet contemplation, meditation, reflection, or prayer. By keeping a watchful eye and tempering the self before it is able to run away from what we are striving for, we can live consciously through our failures keeping our motion towards the light.

Protecting the Limited Resource of Mental Energy

Fostering an environment that allows us to focus our energy and attention is crucial to agency. Our senses control what reaches our consciousness, so taking the time and care to create an environment in which both preconscious and conscious inputs are providing work rather than preventing it amplifies the limited resource of mental energy. This can take the form of passive sensory input or active choice in how we exist in our relationship to all.

Creating a Purposeful Void Between the Self and That Which Seeks to Deceive

We must acknowledge that we cannot know the truth or nature of every thing, and that the information with which we are presented may be guiding our perception in a way that removes our agency, through the distortion of truth by those who are capable of it. We can choose to be aware of this war and create a void between the information and our self, so that our self is not consumed by the will of another who would use us. The void is not apathy, it is a shield that allows us to seek true light.

The Constraints of Imperfection

The path to meaning is built on constraints. An area of weakness can be made a strength through the meaning found in struggle to the non-obvious solution. This is how the imperfect self builds complexity outward to all.

Living in an Imperfect World

If we must make a forced choice due to imperfection of the world, we may lack the knowledge required to perform the mental calculus of the proper action.

A hierarchy of value is proposed:

life, agency, knowledge, substance, time, and inaction.

Using a heuristics of grace and agency defined by our relationship with the actors, we can evaluate (where the Grace of the relationship is between 0 and 1 and Freedom is between 0 and 1):

Universal Potential Gain = Freedom*(Other(increase) - (1-Grace)*Self(reduction))

There is no way to increase the Universal Potential Gain without self-sacrifice.

When the actors consent, the balance of freedom is (1) the gain maintains a positive status, but when they are in direct conflict freedom is (0).

The offering of our grace is both the gift and burden of agency. Since grace is a relational heuristic and the balance of freedom is not always a perfect calculation, our evaluation of this heuristic and calculus will be imperfect. The lack of perfect knowledge allows agency to exist. We cannot know, we can only provide the moment of choice. We must seek grace in navigating these imperfections and this uncertainty moment to moment by looking outward.

The most important consideration of living in an imperfect world is the reality of unavoidable suffering. The hope of the removal of suffering towards a state of absolute good is ultimate goal of the framework. The agency of others must be upheld except for in acts of harm. Agency cannot be used as a justification for taking an action to destroy life for the sake of freedom.

Failure Modes in Application

Dissociation

Dissociation is the creation of a barrier of void around the self. This prevents the feeling of emotion. It can be used as a tool to reduce pain, but can lead to dangerous consequences as emotion is necessary to anchor behavior.

The Negative-Sum Game or Structural Chaos of the World

In game theory, a negative-sum game is a game in which all participants lose no matter what action or inaction they take. These types of situations should almost never happen. If they do happen, then it is possible that there are missing constraints or knowledge about the situation. However, if they do happen, then there is no good solution that can be prescribed. One must find a way to act that best leads back to grace and redemption.

Failure to Question

Even if we are presented with the truth, we must not blindly accept it. We must make an effort to practice a questioning of truth, so that we can understand it and make it our own instead of it simply being someone else’s truth.

Limits of the Hardware of Personhood

Operating one’s self outside of the limit of their ability yields to the breakdown of thought and causes agency to be destroyed. When the limits of the self are not acknowledged and we do not take adequate time for rest or preparation, we are choosing to relinquish agency to the chaos of our underlying mental hardware.

Epilogue

Even if there is war in heaven, there is hope in faith. At each moment we can use the strength from all of those who were before and all those who will be after to know and plan to accept grace. The act of choosing to strive is an act of love for all. The opportunity to strive is the love from all. We may laugh, we may rest, and we may find comfort in the smallest step up the mountain.