Transcending

ESSENTIALS in navy.
EXPLANATIONS in maroon


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This powerful idea has seemed mysterious,
even spooky to some.

In a nut shell, transcending means to rise above your ordinary daily experience.
At least, we need some distance from situations and circumstances.
One of the greatest psychologists of the 20th Century was Dr. Ken Wilber.
Here is Wilber's idea of transcending.

  1. A baby sees something it wants to approach.  It learns to crawl and "gets mobile."
  2. Next, this little person sees others walking and gets the idea to copy them.
  3. Next, this person sees someone riding a bicycle and copies them too.
  4. Now, this new cyclist can avoid hitting pedestrians because they know the limitations of walking.  So they are not expected to get out of the way.
  5. The cyclist sees someone driving a car, so learns to travel that way too.
  6. When they drive, they can understand how the cyclist sees the road etc., and drives accordingly.
  7. Some drivers, get the idea it would be great to fly a helicopter.  So they do!
  8. Now, the pilot has a bird's eye view of cars in the streets below.  He develops a "big picture" view of  cars on the road.
  9. Later, when pilots gets back in the car, they don't forget the bird's eye view or big picture.
  10. They can "see around corners," anticipating when they will find ahead on the journey.
  11. Thus, we can say, the driver has a transcendent view of driving their car.
  • It is never the same again.  Similarly, when they ride a bicycle, they have a better understanding of stopping distances etc., for the cars sharing the road.  This is the transcending cyclist!
  • So, it seems transcending is applying a more "advanced" understanding to a simpler situation.
  • Here is potential Wisdom in everyday situations!


How is real transcending possible?
Real transcending is about space and time! Let’s check our equipment:
  • We live in our body and it is always with us.
  • Wherever we are, our body is always right in the middle of things.
  • We could say it is always right here, right now!
  • This seems so matter of fact, but it is a powerful idea, we can use to make life easier.
  • We have a mind and it seems to have more choice.
  • Our mind can go into the past to recall things that we learned back then.
  • This is handy, because some past experiences were painful and we don’t want to repeat them.
  • Also, we may have learned a few tricks to make things easy.
  • Our mind can also go into the future, or so it seems.
  • Actually, our mind just uses imagination to dream up possibilities, 
    mostly gathering little memories from the past.
  • This pretty fancy work, but very useful for planning, and deciding on actions 
    we might choose or avoid.
  • Our mind can also stay in the here and now with our body.
  • We could say this is the only real place for the mind, 
    because even the past is rebuilt by our imagination, 
    like calling up a file on our computer screen.
  • We have a heart, or spiritual expression capacity.  
    (When we use the word spirit here, we are not talking about ghosts or getting religious.)
  • We often talk about team spirit, and this is what I mean here.
  • Our heart, often monitors things going on in body and mind.  It has its likes and dislikes.
  • We could say it can learn, from living in families and community.
  • This would be an conscience, but a learned one.

  • Our heart, sometimes has “a mind of its own!”
  • So, it can go against the learned conscience.
  • If it does this, we can bet it is because it is tuned to what we call the inner voice.
  • This is actually pushing our expression toward something more natural and safe.
  • Our heart, needs the mind to include inputs in thinking.
  • But the heart is like a little gyroscope that keeps a ship on course, 
    when no land is in sight and the wind is a factor.
  • In the scrolling page about the inner voice, we used an idea of the executive jet, with:
    1. Sleek fuselage (body)
    2. Powerful motors, emotions
    3. pilot (mind) who learns to control things
    4. passenger (inner voice) who has a purpose to fulfill.

  • So, at some point the pilot can keep practicing 
    but they have no particular destination or purpose.
  • Here we see that the heart has some inborn agenda for a person!
  • If our mind can relax its need to control things, 
    the heart transcends and we see the "big picture."
  • With our bird's eye view, we may see our life in context of others around us.
  • This gives new meaning to the word "cooperation."
  • Some call it "CO-creation!"
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