I’ve been thinking lately … a lot. It’s not that I don’t usually think a lot, just that I’ve been thinking about stuff more than usual lately.

When I talk to people about thinking (which I also do a lot) most of them seem to keep their thoughts separate. For them one thing has little to nothing to do with another thing. Like when they are thinking about an issue at work they aren’t connecting that to the little league game they went to the night before with their children. Iit can be anything they are thinking about that they keep separate from other things, as though their thoughts are separate things themselves.

This way of thinking leads to keeping ones self separate from the things your thinking about as well. It’s as if there’s this “stuff” out there and there’s you over here … separate. Of course you are present to the “stuff” that’s happening over there, but “it” isn’t you, or even necessarily connected to you.

Yet I keep getting things connected when I think about them. For me one thought leads to and connects with another, in a seamless, interconnected pattern that forms the whole. Within the whole-form I exist in relation to … I am part and parcel of it. What happens to and within the whole-form I am connected and engaged with happens to me as well. It’s almost at some level like I am the whole-form … inseparable.

When I take this back to a personal level, i.e.: what my experience is in the moment becomes a simple awareness … you can call it a “state” if you prefer. However, that state is not indiscriminate. That state gets organized by virtue of the way I have chosen to organize myself cybernetically.

I’ll keep this simple (really) … there is no choice I have but to be present to my own experience, including what I’m experiencing about what’s going on around me. My responses internally and externally, what I call behaviors – including cognition, are how I know myself to be in response to my experience. Yet I can choose how I respond, i.e.: my behaviors … including the state experience I am having, via my behaviors, e.g.: cognitive and somatic.

This is really cool!!!

I can choose my state (experience) by manipulating my behaviors, cognitive and somatic, and therefore the experience I’m having at any given time can only be what I’ve chosen it to be within the limits of my ability to manipulate my behaviors.

Now of course here’s the most important question: What state do I choose?

What’s Nothing Got To Do With It???

Since I accept that the way I experience whatever happens around/to me gets based in the choice I make relative to it, I hold myself responsible for choosing if I want to have the experience I want to be having.

The fundamental choice becomes one of direction, i.e.: what will this experience mean to me moving forward …”What will I be experiencing moving forward from here (this moment in space-time)?”

My experience and expertise tells me that answering this question becomes first and foremost binary, i.e.: will my experience moving forward be positive or negative (as I experience it personally … remember like the N.Y. Yankees umpire said, “It ain’t nothin’ tills I calls it somethin!”)? Within the scope of the MythoSelf Process this turns into a question of choosing an excitatory or inhibitor bias to be operating and aiming yourself forward from in an ongoing way.

In the excitatory bias I am open to the data stream that is present scanning for opportunities, e.g.: “What does this mean to me in terms of how I can move further towards where/what/how/who I want to be?

In the inhibitory bias I am closed to the data stream and assessing it based on previous experience/s, e.g.: “What does this mean to me in terms of what I need to be doing to remain safe and/or taking action to remain as I am now?”

[NOTE: Within the inhibitory bias the decision about what action to be taking is based on previous experience, NOT remaining open to options that hadn’t been considered or available previously.]

In the inhibitory life is organized around the past.

In the excitatory bias life is organized around the future.

While this is an oversimplification, it’s a simple rubric to use in contemplating the impact of making the binary choice between the inhibitory and excitatory biases in deciding how to respond.

Now here’s the kicker …

It’s fundamentally impossible to choose the excitatory bias until you are operating in relation to “NOTHING”

Nothing is a position of consideration where you haven’t decided what something means before you encounter it, i.e.: you remain open to what continuously becomes emergent as life continues to unfold around you.

YES … it’s that simple … and simple ain’t always easy as I say.

The Path To NOTHING …