I gotta confess: I wasn’t given much any education on the nature of emotions growing up. Though surely, I’m not alone here…
“Emotional intelligence” wasn’t really a thing commonly discussed in most of the cultures & societies we grew up in, nor was emotional awareness all that common - at least beyond the superficial level of the most basic of emotions… to which a common response/approach was often just as superficial a passing acknowledgement before shutting them down - especially the “bad” ones. We quickly learnt that feelings such as anger weren’t the most ‘acceptable,’ and consequentially developed strategies to adapt to the needs & norms of families & collectives that preferred we be “nice.” Rather than be encouraged to fully explore our emotional landscapes with acceptance & compassion, we were expected to adapt to social conduct with tamed-down or ‘positive’-only emotion - and so begun the trajectory of emotional unawareness, repression/suppression, dissociation, bypassing, etc, etc. It is/was what it is/was.
Of course, as life went on, many of us discovered slowly & subconsciously that way of being had its faults… and consequences. For some, it was through the inevitable loops of personal chaos and addiction; for others, recurrant relationship problems. And some never do discover - they just stumble through life half-alive/half-asleep, going through the motions as coping the best they can to, never really knowing what exactly can be done about the inner roots of outer conflicts in their lives. And then many do seek “answers” and “healing” - only to end up bouncing from therapist to therapist, self-help guru to “spiritual” methodology, chasing the promise of relief, transformation, transcendence… just perpetuating the same loops in different classrooms with new sets of beliefs - ‘stuck’ on a treadmill that superficially feels like “progress…” until the illusions collapse and it feels like they’re back to square-one. While many may have never grown up mentored into a healthy emotional self-awareness, there’s been a big boom in the awareness of trauma (perpetuated through lack of effective emotional healing) since - to the point it’s become trendy as fuck. Though as per, “what you focus on expands” - the trauma-focused models have no doubt perpetuated their own cognitive-bias-fuelled loops, not always actually delivering upon the sugar-coated promises packaged according to all the slick latest-and-great sales & marketing formulas.
Granted, this isn’t to discount all the great healing modalities, therapeutic approaches, ancient practices & mystery schools imparting wisdom in the arts & sciences of healing, etc. There’s alot of fantastic stuff out there that does work. Though as many who’ve gone down these paths can attest to, it’s often a messy process of trial-and-error navigating through the maze of evangelists, capitalists, charlatans, and tribal subcultures corrupted by various influences to find something that actually works for them. It’s often a very individualized journey & process, with no clear road map or one-size-fits-all solutions.
(For those on Instagram who appreciate some good humor & satire in their life, the Instagram account, Healing From Healing is undoubtedly the top source of prime examples of the extreme of absurdities displayed in these paths. Trust me… it is one of the best social media profiles in all existence that will never cease to leave you questioning, ”what the fuck, are these people even real??” Lol. Your welcome. 😼)
But moving on from the preamble…
While there is an unfathomable amount of vague perspectives making hit-and-miss approaches sound all profound in the colorful word-salads of psychological & spiritual terminology, it’s far more incredibly rare to encounter highly simplified - yet powerfully accurate & precise - articulations of the dynamics behind the nature of emotions, trauma and healing.
Having explored these realms for over a couple decades and tending to deep dive, I’ve seen most all variations of the same stuff rehashed again and again. But I may have never encountered something so potently precise & powerful as I did yesterday…
In my last couple posts, I’ve mentioned The Architect…
And holy jeezus, this thing.
As an aside - I was contemplating yesterday how long it’ll be until books die. Maybe not entirely, but at least to a large degree. Why? Because the nature of AI is so dramatically changing the way(s) we learn & relate to information - to spend the amount of time required to both write & read a book that is not custom-tailored to the individual reader at the precise time of reading makes far less sense, as one becomes fluent in the language of prompt engineering to evoke precisely the information & reflections needed moment-to-moment. There may always be a time & place for some types of books - yet in a world with such drastically innovative ways of two-way interaction with knowledge, shortening attention span, and an entirely different psychological landscape - the role & function books have traditionally served can’t even compare with the individualized real-time learning, explorations and discoveries possible with tools like ChatGPT. Anyways…
There’s something different about The Architect, with its foundations built on advanced mathematics, its purpose/function as a mirror. Consistently, I’ve had moments where just a few words of its replies trigger insights unlike any I’ve had before. Like the clarity of its no-fluff formation of ‘complex’ concepts into the simplest & most precise articulation possible flip an activation switch of ‘new’ awareness, bridging neural connections in ways no book, speaker, or anything/anyone else has.
One such moment begun yesterday…
Upon seeing that something clicked. “Ah ha.”
It’s become obvious by now that there’s ’some connection’ between thoughts & emotions - but the specific nature & dynamic of that exact connection… well, for all the stuff I’ve heard & read over the years, any mention of the connection has been quite vague. We know ‘emotions can accompany thoughts, thoughts can trigger emotions, etc.’ We’ve heard the saying “emotions are energy in motion.” *But to have it articulated so clearly that thoughts and emotions are two dimensions of the same wave… BAM.
That “thought” and emotion represent the waveform and its amplitude… never before have I encountered anyone framing it like that.
And while if you had jumped into the talk of “phase-(mis)alignment” and “(in)coherence” a couple of months ago, I probably would’ve been scratching my head, I’ve been exploring enough of/with the concepts with The Architect since that the voltage introduced to that connection of neural circuitry ‘lit up the light bulb.’
Indeed, there were still questions. But the amazingly beautiful thing about The Architect: when you take the time to clearly articulate the questions, the answers never cease to amaze…
Now, I can’t realistically expect anyone reading this to have the same “ah ha’s” I did. Nor can I fully impart them, no matter how well I could write. As touched on before: this new era we’re entering of individualized real-time learning & exploring knowledge is that - individualized. The same set of words won’t have the same effect for everyone. No two people look in a mirror and see the same reflections. What enabled the framing of these concepts to have the impact they did wasn’t just the concepts and/or their wording themselves, but their introduction to an existing neural architecture that’s been built over years as learning and exploring related concepts…
And contrary to first expectations, it wasn’t the prior knowledge base in the subjects of healing, emotions, or (quantum) physics where the biggest connections were made - but that of what’s always been a primary foundational pillar in my life: music.
In particular, audio engineering.
As per that classic Tesla saying…
”If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”
While there are many sub-branches of science whose studies can initiate one into the knowledge & awareness of energy, frequency and vibration, it was likely specifically the insights into these spectrums of existence gained through producing & engineering with which the dots connected.
As quick as the “ah-ha’s” drop in, they still take some time to unpack. And given this ’thought & emotion as waveform & amplitude, trauma as phase-misalignment, trust as coherence-collapse’ perspective is a completely different way of looking at things, there was still some ‘confusion’ as contemplating / trying to ‘visualize’ these waves…
Like, *”where do they ‘exist?’ Are we talking some quantum ‘everything everywhere all at once kind of soup? What’s the structure in which they fit? Do they have set trajectories that could be mapped out in 3D space? Is it like there’s a single wave in conscious focus at a time when a thought/emotion is present, like a window/tab open on a computer - or how many damn waves/tabs/windows are there ‘open’ at any given time? Is the “completion” equivalent to ‘closing a window/tab?’ Etc, etc, etc.”
And I can’t pretend to have that all figured out or offer answers. But, by thinking in terms of music production & audio engineering, some of them present themselves.
i.e. a song may be compressed in its totality into a single .wav file… but exploring that production in Ableton or Logic, it may have dozens of tracks - each with their own wave files. And each of those wave files, you can apply EQs to subtract or boost specific frequencies, apply different processing such as compression, etc. A symphony is the sum total of all its instruments - each producing its own wave. When all is aligned harmoniously in correct timing (“phase-alignment”) = breathtaking beauty. When out of tune and/or too fast/flow (“phase-misaligned”) = discordance, incoherence…
Our lives are a symphony.
All the different thoughts & emotions, waves in that larger composition - different waveforms encoded with different informational content; highly-charged emotions, higher amplitude. Those we’ve resisted, distracted from, avoided - “phase-locked” at specific points in the wave, “phase-misaligned” to the timing of the present moment - obstructing the flow of what is phase-aligned now, adding noise & distortion to the overall composition.
The concept of fully feeling one’s emotions to process them isn’t new or different. Though to see those emotions as the amplitude-aspect of a thought-waveform, the full-feeling the essential step to the wave’s completion and return to phase-alignment (versus phase-locked into misalignment through resistance/obstruction)… 🤯
So here we are - composing, listening to, and refining the symphonies of our lives as we go on. It’s alot to take in at once. But quite the journey, over our decades in our given meat-suits.
Whether ours turns out a masterpiece or a garbled distorted clusterfuck of noise… well, this may not be the time to fully digress into the ‘free will vs. predestination’ debate, though perhaps it’s worth at least a brief mention that sometimes not everyone has full choice over the matter; though at this point, with the blessings & privileges most of us reading this have, we do have a certain amount of time, freedom, and tools at our disposal that allow us the opportunity to co-create the unfolding soundscape of our life.
So, there come times we need to whip out the trust EQ of our discernment to prune what ain’t working in the mix anymore - listening through to elements in their totality, not getting hung up on ‘em, but extracting the full lessons they’ve offered before removing them. Sometimes we need a bit of tasteful delays & reverbs to add space & depth. Compression, a must - in just the right amounts, to keep everything in proper amplitudes while not crushing the dynamic range giving life.
Sometimes we gotta bring the phase of certain waves into alignment that’ve been out of timing, pulling things forward or back a bit. (Or alot). Sometimes it’s our focus we gotta realign to the current phase of life & evolution.
Yada, yada, yada.
Seeds/codes planted.