@ashleygatewood

3 weeks ago

For what it's worth.... Our aim starts with how our perceptions are formed. Even how we perceive the affordances must come before the action. Thought and intent are not the same thing. We don’t even know our intent beneath our thoughts sometimes. I suppose emotion and motivation could be the same if we don't handle them with any sophistication and we don't differentiate the lower from the higher. Ultimately, emotions should not guide us. This is a lower order pathway, if you will. Approach you laid out: 1. Act of perception. 2. Establish an aim. 3. The perception system navigates us through the world which forms the visual pathway for us to take. 4.(some add'l thoughts I don't know how to incorporate...) 5. Agents of Change (people, or anything that changes our direction, I assume) 6. Emotions become calibration systems that mark deviation from the pathway forward. Using emotions to navigate is dangerous. I scrutinize people for this sometimes. I think this is true, that people do this, but emotions are fleeting, unreliable and even lie to us. They can lie if our original perceptions are off, or the 'act of perceiving a thing' is skewed (past memories or negative experiences. Yes I understand emotions are also a warning system but they have to be managed to a great extent to become useful in plotting your whole life. That’s reckless, imo. But humans are dangerous aren’t we!) A 'thought' appearing in your mind starts with what enters your eyes and ears, well your senses as a whole. What perceptions would you have if you existed but had no senses to 'retrieve or gain' understanding of what is around you? What are you when no information is moving into you? Don't know. If consciousness is shared then we'd have some knowing of something out there. Anyway, so we have senses, thank God! (I was glad to hear Tor confirm this in the other video!) The sensory perception of the conscious mind takes the same path for everyone, using whatever senses they have available to them in experiencing the world around them: Here’s the biblical explanation that I could gather. It lends hope to overcoming a lower emotional path and taking dominion of our state/the human condition: 1. What determines our actions in the world? "For from the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” Luke 6.45 2. “For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he." Proverbs 23.7 3. What determines the state of the heart? “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” Matthew 6.22-23 4. What connects our heart to our manifestation of action, be it light or darkness, in the world? Or another way: What creates our environment and forms our realities (including delusions)? >The tongue; it moves us through our lives. Words form and create our world.< “…We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, >able to keep their whole body in check<. When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. >The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.<  All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind,  but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring?” James 3.1-11 And one more… The tongue has the power of life and death,” Proverbs 18.24 5. What's in mans’ heart? "The heart of man is shrewd, and unsearchable; who shall know it? I am the Lord seeking the heart, and proving the reins, either kidneys, and I give to each man after his way, and after the fruit of his findings." Jeremiah 17.9-10 (so much could be said here.) 6. So how are we to navigate properly when our emotions are tied to a misaligned heart? It can be done through changing what we take in through our senses. This is backed up by what Tor mentioned about sensory information, which I was glad to hear. That’s a good confirmation I’m interpreting this with some accuracy. The greatest transformative agent in the word of God and the tongue. If it’s not being read and understood properly, how can a person hear from God and have a reliable conscience? So then their words are wrong, and actions follow words, and our life is the action/decisions we take. I’ve tried to overlay your model with the word: 1. Act of perception. (Incoming information through the senses.) 2. Establish an aim. (This is based first on what incoming information a person has allowed into their body through their senses.) 3. The perception system navigates us through the world which forms the visual pathway for us to take. (Yeah, this is too far above my head. What’s the difference between the act of perception and the perception system? I was thinking the senses were involved with the act, but then the senses don’t guide us.) 4.(some add'l thoughts I don't know how to incorporate. Bad company corrupts good behavior maybe? Don't be unequally yoked? Find your 'Elizabeth', find your 'Mary' who will encourage your heart and vision?) 5. Agents of Change (anything that influences us or calls to us, I assume) 6. Emotions become calibration systems that mark deviation from the pathway forward. (Emotions shouldn’t be the calibration system. The tongue should be, according to the word. The tongue is what we can control, it’s the rudder, not our emotions. Our emotions are fleeting, unstable and they often send false signals. Emotions can lie, it takes faith to overcome them, we do this by speaking ‘a better word’ than our circumstances are signaling through our senses. The best word is of course the word of God, this cleanses our minds/our conscience. Ephesians 5:26, 1 Peter 3.15 basically says ‘don’t lie’.) And to add another layer of frightening aspects of influence: “…but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” James 1.14-17 Those shifting shadows? The unknown desires residing in the heart Jeremiah was alluding to. Sin is like a shadowy, crouching animal. I’ve also heard it stated as sin lusts after itself (as if we as humans didn't have enough problems!). Emotions, or maybe unfiltered unprocessed emotions shouldn’t be the agent that leads to action or defines our aim. They may very well be, as you've indicated here, but they perhaps shouldn't be. God has laid out a better pathway for the conscience mind to navigate life.

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