feedback

How Questioning My Manifestation Process May Lead to Enlightenment

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Within my bubble of limited awareness, my manifestation process works like a computer input-output (I/O) system. As in a computer, the outcome of a process can provide feedback that modifies the input to the next cycle.

Seems like a fairly straight-forward and simple process – change the input, change the outcome, repeat. Each cycle of the manifestation process provides input to another. Conservation of energy!

Each manifestation cycle starts with an intention that provides input to the process, the outcome of which illustrates and often amplifies the intent. The amplified illustration of intent offers feedback that is much easier to measure than was the input intention that started the process. In simple terms:

Intention in -> amplification process -> amplified illustration of intention out => feedback => intention in to next cycle…

Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO)

Much of the time, my quiet inner intentions are “hidden” behind much louder outcomes that grab my attention later. That means I feel that I’m aware of my intentions later along my timeline than when I set them. Right now, for example, I’m dealing with the manifest illustration of an intention I may have set into process minutes, hours, or days ago – maybe longer.

And then there is the data issue:

Spend enough time in deep enough conversation with artificial-intelligence experts, and at some point, they will all offer up the same axiom: garbage in, garbage out. It’s possible to sidestep sampling bias and ensure that systems are being trained on a wealth of balanced data, but if that data comes weighted with our society’s prejudices and discriminations, the algorithm isn’t exactly better off. AI is evolving much more rapidly than the data it has to work with, so it’s destined not just to reflect and replicate biases but also to prolong and reinforce them. An algorithm, after all, is just a set of instructions.

Of course, there’s another solution, elegant in its simplicity and fundamentally fair: get better data. (Groen, 2018)

What happens when the algorithm trains on poor data? The algorithm simply processes and amplifies whatever data I feed it. When my intention is unclear (garbage in), as it might be when emotionally charged, for example, the machinery of the program will supply my senses with feedback that looks unclear (garbage out) – amplified!

Questioning Manifestation

To manage feedback, I apply awareness-inducing challenge questions. To the degree I’m aware of these questions, I become aware of my true intentions – and maybe myself in the process.

First, let’s take charge of the process by owning it: “My intention led to the outcome I perceive.” Then, let’s reverse the manifestation process to discover our hidden agenda:

  • “What” questions turn observation of outcome into feedback – “What do I feel, hear, and see?” (the manifestation/illustration of intention)
  • “How” questions turn feedback into expressions of intention – “How does this [observation] illustrate my intention?”
  • “Why” questions expose and define intentions – “Why does my intention feel, sound, and appear as I feel, hear, and see it?”
  • “Who” questions challenge the identity of the source of intentions – “Who am I who perceives this as I do?”

What might happen were I to extend this questioning process to EVERY manifestation? Even those that appear to me to be owned by someone else? After all, aren’t my “observations” of others actually MY perception of their process? Am I not the one doing the perceiving and interpreting in my world? When someone I care about is having a difficult time, is it not me who perceives them having a difficult time? I may agree with others that my friend is having difficulty, and yet, is it not me who perceives others in agreement?

Beyond Manifestation

At some point, I may apply the above questions to EVERYTHING I perceive. Until then, questioning that which appears as mine alone will provide a window into the hidden world of my ego and maybe light the passageway into full enlightenment.

Sources:

  • The Walrus Online, How We Made AI As Racist and Sexist As Humans, By Danielle Groen, Illustration by Cristian Fowlie, Updated 8:56, May. 17, 2018 | Published 10:19, May. 16, 2018.
  • Noble, Safiya Umoja. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. NYU Press. Paperback book available on Amazon.com.

What Will You Allow Your Catalysts to Do for You Today?

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I want to be in control of my experiences, yet, what I get is a catalyst that challenges that want. Catalysts can be like roadblocks that confront my mobility or they can be fuel to enhance it. I intend that a catalyst provoke introspection – to cause me to question who I am and what I want.

Nature reflects back to me what I fear and love. Catalysts confront my misconceptions that are always about my fear or love of self. My unresolved thoughts perpetuate misunderstandings, which trigger catalysts that I will probable interpret as threats. Like an alarm clock, catalysts stimulate my desire to wake up when I most want to sleep. They encourage me, sometimes strongly, to choose again.

What is the benefit of choosing again?

What would life be like without catalysts, a means for questioning our choices? I know that when I’m defending negative choices or seeming positive ones, I’m trying to control me by controlling my experiences. When I go against myself I don’t get what I want… control.

Catalysts work best where intention favors understanding. When a catalyst reveals my choice and asks for another, I learn what options may work better for my highest good.

Sometimes I blame others, situations, and things for my sense of failure and pain. This behavior perpetuates my misunderstanding of me, which implies that I don’t want to know me. When I allow catalysts to teach me by offering a conscious look at feedback for my creations, the lights tend to come on!

A conscious look at feedback

From an ego perspective, I should always get what I want without question or any unsupportive feedback. This way of existing leaves me feeling satisfied and yet, unsatisfied. This same school of thought leaves out any constructive means for understanding through trial and error. This type of defense is as limiting as a border, boundary, or gated property one cannot see or move beyond.

My need to be right without the benefit of understanding is a fool’s errand… and… fertile ground for catalysts.

What will you allow your catalysts can do for you today? Choose… and choose again…

Imagination, Predictable Patterns, and Feedback

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In an environment of predictable patterns and feedback, my imagination can accurately anticipate every experience. Life could easily be taken for granted in such a state of certitude. No need for critical analysis or conscientious interpretation to maintain a sense of knowing – just a vivid imagination. So, in that environment, I adjust feedback to make it acceptable, and hold it in place with confirmation bias.

I might perceive change of any kind as a threat to my peace. The need to put things back the way they were is imperative. And of course, there is always my imagination to fall back on. After all, my perfect world may be based on my ability to boost my imagination at will to smooth out the inconsistencies.

To mitigate my fear of the unknown, I initiate a predictive equation based on certitude.

Predictable => Imagination + Bias

Uncertainty evokes fear upon a dependent mind by hindering confidence. In my biased reality, imagination is a must in keeping my perspective accurate. When information in the form of feedback threatens my certitude, I have to create interpretations that appease my need for certitude and override feedback accuracy.

In my First-Second Degree of Illumination bubble, I use bias to interpret feedback to validate my predictions. My need to be right means I will seek to disprove that I am wrong. I can at least be accurate about my defense of my rightness.

Through interpretation, I can manipulate accuracy within the pattern-feedback equation. By knowing ahead of an experience what my responses will be, I can feel safer. Yet, I limit the understanding held in that experience by being certain of the cause and effect without questioning it.

Thus, maybe prediction IS projection.

Accountability and Validation

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There may be such a tight relationship between validation and accountability as to imply they are compatible and inseparable as one concept.

Consider these basic definitions:

Accountability – An ability to account to what creates value in the doing – and values in each specific doing.

Validation – The perception that some outcome meets my specifications and fulfills my need (s). It’s how I recognize or affirm the value or worth of [something], making it real.

Both accountability and validation support a need, which judgements of VALUE make real.

  1. Validate – Being – giving to satisfy needed value
  2. Accountable – Doing – receive to satisfy needed value

Comparing Values for Accounting Purposes

  1. Some “thing”
  2. Another “thing” to which the first “thing” is accountable – a value-based relationship.

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