The past informs the being which you currently find yourself as embodying, it creates potentialities which in their actualization inform the modification of your ascertained perceptual evaluation system, the current state of which, you find yourself inhabiting in the present. The present moments content contains underneath its subjective manifestation the state of being which you find yourself in now, both of which, the content and the underlying mode, is effectively modified by what has happened inside your historical development. The structure that comprises the evaluation, judgment, and filtration of possible experiential neomatic content is modified by what has happened to us, what we have experienced, patterns recognized, habits formed, and optimality accounted for, thus, the past matters insofar as it is the necessary precondition to our present experience, and is inextricably connected to the present and the future.
As for the pasts objective existence, we can start with the indubitable subjective claim that our present moment is appearing to exist for us, and while this holds for us subjectively in regards to the present, the past holds the same connotation. While we always are fallible as to our recollection of the past, our perception and subsequent conscious experience of the present, and our projection of likely or desired futures, we can state with a high degree of certainty that at the very least what is appearing in our conscious experience, whether it be memory, sensory experience, psychological formations, or projection and imagination, are all appearing to happen. This appearance of existence is a certainty to us, whether or not it actually coincides with reality, whether or not it is an illusion, or an inaccurate description based upon human limitations of cognitive capturing of phenomena, is a question of probability, and never of certainty, whether it be of the past, or otherwise. We do not exist in indubitable certainty in the Cartesian conception of being unable to doubt our doubt, or “I think, therefore I am” but rather, thinking and its psychological correlates are appearing to exist.
Insofar as our present moment subjective experience matters to us, which, we can agree does, as long as we value a pleasurable, satisfying, meaningful experience of life, the past has meaning to us. This meaning isn’t relevant to a being that isn’t us, and we can’t extrapolate it to a universal purpose without an air of falsifiable contention, but what we can say, is that insofar as we are life, insofar as we have a value system and better or worse experiences, that the past which informs these experiences is meaningful in its modification and actual effects in mediating our conscious content and psychological state, to us, and for us.
Here I’m going to rephrase this truth claim as, “arising mental phenomena isn’t an accurate representation of reality”. Here’s why.
We here will be working from an idealist point of view, which itself can be factual if its conceptualization is properly articulated, and in doing so it asks of us to delimit certain caveats in order to fully express the intricacies of mental phenomena and their relation to the truth. We can only trust the content of our experience to the degree to which it is a representation of the truth, it always lies in relation to the truth. What the mind creates includes the totality of our experience, and is presupposed in the perception of scientific data, including its intention towards discovery, the application towards revelation, our intuiting the results, and the conclusionary remarks which stem from the scientific deduction of said results. The entire process is presupposing an understanding of the Being which we are, and of our perception system in its modification. The mental comprehension that is embodied through automatic intuition into the nature of phenomena is itself mediated by our perceptive system, it is not the actual experience of the content as it is in actuality. The only mental content which can be trusted as to accurately representing an aspect of reality, is mental content that concedes a framework of its manifestation in the conceptualization, or intuited pre-conceptual thought, which, I believe, isn’t explicit in a non-conceptual intuition or mental experience. The ability to conceptualize a framework which relates the infallibility of conclusive claims as to content as it is perceived, must contain some form of linguistic representation in order to make explicit that a framework is being operated within in the truth-claim of its content. For example, the mental phenomena which arises in conscious experience which has the content of non-exclusionary claims, such as the experiencing of the visual field, and intuits seeing an object as it is “in itself” doesn’t take into account the limiting ability of our visionary capacity to see the other characteristics which make up the object in itself, or the being which it is, the experience towards which the object is embedded within. In the making explicit of the caveats which course through such an experience, phenomenologically, we can create mental content that can be trusted to a higher degree than our initial intuitions. The recognition of the phenomena, explicitly, such as, “the experience of the gaze of conscious awareness towards the visual content as it is perceived by the being which I am, made an object appear to exist in a manner which oriented my being towards a certain making sense of the object in my intuition of what it is”. In this manner we recognize the experience from the perspective which it is embedded within, recognize the absence of the thing in itself, and properly frame mental content that is, itself, conceptual in nature, but a more accurate and trustworthy description of the mental phenomenon that occurred.
In our experience everything is presented into conscious awareness through the filter of the mind, tempered by an inherent value structure, and developed through internal representations of perceived content. It all is a representation of the actual phenomena in itself, not as it is perceived by our perceptive faculties, but as the faculties are modified in perceiving. The very presentation towards our embodied ability to receive sensory stimuli is modified in its uptaking as our organisms data set by a structure of evaluation in the perceive abilities. Secondly, the content which is perceived, which enters into the perceptual grasp of our embodied system, is itself modified by our value structure. This means, the content which is intuited as meaningful, is meaningful intuited after its uptaking into our orientation which is dependent on prior experience, genetic modification, our environment, learned instinctual response, and in turn we are naturally oriented towards a certain mode of being in relation to the digested datum which was perceived. Thirdly, the manner which we embody in relation to the perception and integration of our Being in relation to the perceived content, furthermore rarely makes its presence known to the gaze of conscious, and is filtered by the value system which we have developed (either covered, uncovered, consciously directed towards its development, or not) that “decides” if the content actually makes its way into conscious awareness. Fourthly, the content thus appearing, is itself filtered by the embodied system which is the totality of our Being, from a lower resolution image, by the very mode of being which is present in the acquisition of mental content in the moment of being consciously aware of it. One way or another, what we are seeing in our conscious gaze, that which arising in mental experience, that which is presented subjectively to us in our momentary awareness of the content in consciousness, has been modified multiple times, and the very system which lies at the basis of its modification, is itself limited in its scope and accuracy. Our biological organs which produce the initial inheritance of perceiving content is itself limited by necessity of evolved selection, and thus itself, in the first place, is not accurate, in totality, towards the actuality of the world as it is itself. What we react to is merely the trained response to the world as it is perceived, the world as we find it, as we are able to find it, in relation to ourselves, which are part of it. We act accordingly.
While this explains the process by which content is instantiated into the realm of consciousness, which our gaze can become aware of in its shifting from content to content, it also leads to the necessary formulation of created representations of embodied action and speech. IF the very content which we experience itself is only a fragment, or a piece, or a perspective, of the world as it truly is, how much more so is the representation of our being actualized in our speech and actions? We ought not trust the conceptualizations, the speech we utter, and if so, how much even more so ought we lack conviction towards the accuracy of representations of Being produced in the perception of interpersonal reactions? If the content of our own experience is heavily mediated before coming into conscious awareness, and the conceptualization, thoughts, ideas, speech, and actions, which henceforth are actualized, are themselves mediated by the structure of our Being which is wholly outside of our control, and wholly outside of what is most optimal, or what is most in-itself- the actuality of our being, how ought we to ever believe another person? We must solely conclude that we do the best we can, to the degree that we can, in understanding ourselves, in representing ourselves, in understanding reality, in representing reality, and conclude that the perception of others and our extrapolations of it as we perceive and analyze it, are the best intuitions we have to work with in relation to uncovering the actual truth. While these representations, often in the form of thoughts, intuitions, and conceptual descriptions, are fallible in their accuracy and are presupposing knowledge of our Being which, absent a clear phenomenological analysis, are wholly covered by what our conscious has been ingrained to relay to our conscious gaze, we can make use of that which is presented, and we can strive, to the degree we are able (based on experience, intellect, time, and competency), to move closer to an accurate representation of the truth, and an accurate representation of ourselves through authentic actions. While they always remain a degree removed from what is optimal, that which is produced by our understanding is the most optimal we have available to us in the given moment, the system of the totality of our Being which produces the content in the present moment, is necessarily the only thing we have, and it is, the best we currently have. The training, discipline, improvement, and optimization of perceptual systems, value structure uncovering and optimization which course through our experience, and the conscious directed skill and its actualization in concrete action and movement, speech, thought, etc. (Phenomenological Analysis of Conscious Direction, Value System Instantiation) all can be modified, the very being which we are, and its capabilities, can be modified. This modification can take place towards the goals and aims which we wish to actualize, for which we contain the potential of actualizing.
On the other hand, the accuracy of the internal representation which we experience in the moment, varies in degree to being more or less an accurate model of reality. The more knowledge and experience tempered by wisdom and insight, the more accurate representations we can “create”, or “arise as thoughts”, and the closer it is to the “truth” of the thing in itself, or the content of the idea as it actually is. We must merge both intellectualism and empiricism to a transcendental unity towards which the explaining of its characteristics are an entwinement of both systems of thought.
The arising mental formation stating “the content appearing in the mind, isn’t an accurate representation of reality” is itself a logically correct statement, and can be trusted. Mathematical and formal logical proofs, while arising in the mental gaze, themselves are infallible in being true, and can be trusted, for all intents and purposes (at least from our place in the universe where logic appears to be on solid ground – we cannot extrapolate to the totality of space and time, but merely can conclude in our corner of the universe it appears to be valid). But recognition of the temperance of our experience by the underlying cortical processing system is an insight which holds us to be fallible in our notions and ideas, which is truly beneficial for psychological growth and wellbeing, in moving us closer to the “truth” as well as – in Buddhist terminology – aiding us in removing delusion and keeping us in line with the dharmic universal truth of impermanence of phenomena.
Here we wish to delineate the emergence of conscious direction in its initiating role of preceding action, for the purpose of automatic unconscious habit formations which reinforce the internal disposition towards further development. We start with the initial disposition of the individual, in whatever mode of being he has so acquired as constituting his present moment. Regardless of what the content of his consciousness may be, and regardless of his current psychological makeup, it is possible that a thought arises which leads to a bodily action, or to further thoughts, towards the emergence of emotion, or to a shift in his mode of being. This we define as conscious direction – that conscious forethought that appears to be causally related to our subsequent orientation in the world. This conscious direction appears as intuition, conscious will, a thought in which its intentionality is movement.
The movement which is intentioned by conscious direction is towards any aspect of the totality of our consciously experienced content. Sensory inputs of the visual, tactile, or auditory faculties can be directed to proceed the conscious direction, in such a manner that the proceeding perception is in alignment with the content of conscious direction. The thought may arise in conscious experience of “I will to feel the tactile sensation of my right foot”, this may come in the subjective experience of the conceptual linguistic form of thinking using language, as described, or may be a natural inclination within conscious experience, the mere thought that is pre-conceptual. We know it to be conscious direction by the will to movement, the movement is within the gaze of consciousness. The experiential subjective gaze moves from conscious awareness of the conscious directive, towards the apperception of the tactile sensation in the right foot, the integration of the awareness as conditioned by the perceptible faculty which factors out content of stimuli through the structure of our embodied being, becomes represented in the consciously experienced sensation. In this manner we experience the accomplishment of the conscious direction in its actualization.
In addition to mere consciously directed sensory awareness, and the movement which can manifest in our gaze from mere awareness of present mental content, towards the awareness of mental content which is manifesting in relation to a consciously directive command, there are other movements which can be directed by the conscious will. Like the movement of the gaze of conscious awareness, which, in order to be apprehended mindfully, necessarily requires the implementation of mindfulness during the successive moments proceeding the conscious formulation or realization of the directive, we also can direct movement in any other area that is able to be perceived consciously. This movement that proceeds conscious direction, and the content of the conscious direction, both are necessarily apprehended individually by conscious awareness. Without being consciously aware of the conscious direction, we necessarily are not performing conscious direction, the latter requires the former, yet the former does not require the latter, in order to be manifested in conscious experience or actualized in its application.
While there is a multitude of consciously perceived phenomena which can precede the emergence of further action occurring, here we are only interested in that content which can be acquired by an individual. Meaning – an emotion, or a perception, a memory, can all arise in consciousness in a fashion which directs his mode of being to shift, or which act as causal agents towards the production of additional events in the individual’s life. We are not here interested in external stimulus, only internal stimulus. External stimulus is here wholly out of our “control” in the sense that we cannot direct it within the present moment. What we can direct is the action which proceeds an event occurring which then acts as a stimulus which changes our mode of being or conscious experience. We must here strictly separate that which is internally produced, the act proceeding conscious “will” to instantiate the noema, from the external stimulus, or that which is perceived in embodied form and intuited bodily. We are interested in the experience of that intentioned content produced within the realm of our conscious awareness that subsequently produces action.
The content of conscious direction thus can be anything which we are able to be consciously aware of. Here, conscious awareness is defined as the subjective experience of the content of the present moment, what we are able to experience. While we are always experiencing the present, often the presents relationship to us – us being defined as that transient conscious awareness itself – is that of an unknown known, or something with which we have inherent knowledge of but in the present is unknown, or out of our gaze. Only when the gaze of consciousness is reflexively directed upon itself, when we become aware of our awareness and the content herein of the present moment, does the term I here am calling conscious awareness spring into play. Once we can become aware of our awareness, the ability to recognize conscious content in its relation to being a causal agent in the production of an effectively “produced” content becomes available to us. The use of the word free will here must be eradicated from thought if it so appears to be in relation to the description I am describing. The production of conscious awareness, and of conscious direction, is wholly the product itself of determinate conditions leading to its arising, the ability to do so, like any other mental phenomena, can be improved in its ability to manifest through habitualization, expressed experientially by repeated manifestation into conscious awareness.
As phenomenologically discovered, the intentionality of all consciousness must be recalled. All content of our experience is directed towards something, and the mode of being which we here are referencing as conscious direction is actually the noematic correlate to the underlying noetic content of intentionality. The conscious direction which interests us therefore isn’t the unconscious intentionality behind all human action, it is only the appearing content in experience which occurs before the next moment, it is the conscious causal link to the effect in the moment. While deterministic rules apply to the emergence of conscious direction, this conscious direction is unalterable by the many factors of existence, and being that it is the experience which precedes the next moment, and is all “we” truly have as experiential proof of our ability to choose and alter the world, it would be optimal for us to forge this directional capability to be in line with our values, goals, beliefs, in a way which is psychologically and physically beneficial for us in the next moment, reiterated over time, for us and those we care about. This realm of influence and intention behind the potential theorizing of a beneficial mode of being from which conscious direction can pervade, can be expanded to include as many factors as one wishes. One can look to optimize and alter the content of this conscious direction towards an intention of single-minded consent, toward a singular goal, towards personal psychological wellbeing, towards family relational growth, in effect, anything which stems from the will as worthy of pursuing.
Here a coherent system of values is optimal, so as to not enable our potential for conscious direction in the course of something we value to by hijacked by unconscious and immediate spontaneous pursuits which escape our mindfulness. By entering into a reactionary mode of being which is no longer mindful of the content of consciousness, we let loose the reigns of the psyche to operate in a natural, unmediated, subconsciously directed way. This isn’t negative or positive, as the state of our psyche and the totality of the being which we are, can, prior to the moment described, already be fine-tuned to our values, to a greater or lesser degree. The more time and effort and conscious formulation of rational goals, and habitualizing oneself to the pursuit of such goals, are some of the factors which will enable the spontaneous act of the will in an unmindful state to continue the pursual absent of conscious direction and the mindfulness which is aware of it. The contrary case is what we need to be wary of, in the not fine-tuned, unintegrated, un philosophically formulated valueless mind, the individual is prey to the whims of the will, rather than an orienting north star, and if they have meaningful pursuits which they would rather pursue, the necessary work in the realm of conscious habitualization and conceptualization, and practice, will temper the ability to pursue them.
Wellbeing requires pursuit of what’s meaningful. Pursuit of what’s meaningful requires a value structure. A rational value structure requires philosophical work. Philosophical work requires philosophical knowledge, rational capacity, intellect, effort, time, and experience. The experience of the individual, and his conscious recollection of it, limits the range of content which is available to be philosophically analyzed, thus limited the range of philosophical datum the individual has to work with in the optimization of the value structure (Value Structure Instantiation). Additional knowledge, both logical and experiential, will naturally expand the range of content from which the individual has to work with. The discovery of what is meaningful to one, thus must be uncovered, or created. Uncovered in the sense of an unknown known, as something which provides meaning to the individual’s life but goes unconsciously conceptualized in its relation to the individual, thus is inherent in his being but lacking applied mindfulness to it. Created in the sense of the application of conscious direction towards some pursuit, which creates the conscious conceptualization and attachment of the word “meaning” to that content. We naturally will find that anything our will is directed to has meaning to us, as we are always putting objects, rather physical or mental (idea, thought, experience), in relation to ourselves, and conceptualizing them in ways which makes sense to us. Thus every content of experience has a value and a meaning to us before we become conscious of it containing that meaning.
The very perceptional structure of our embodied being is fine tuned to a value system which has developed over the course of the development of the human genome, and has been modified since birth. This perceptible system necessarily runs in the present moment in its pre-conscious, pre-sentient, pre-directed, form which mediates the content perceived through a type of value structure, the content of which, and the characteristics of which, can be modified and altered by experience, including that which proceeds conscious direction. This perceptible system, I n its current state, is that which limits the range of conscious experience as it is directed to receiving a proceeding mental content in conscious experience, or in the actualization of embodied movement, including physical action, mode of being change, mental content change, and any movement which we are consciously able to be mindful of, or direct our being to be in accordance with. While the very content of conscious experience is mediated by this system, the intuitions, ideas, thoughts, or linguistic commands which arise in conscious awareness under the guise of conscious direction, are themselves the product the same embodied totality of our Being which gives rise to the instantiation not only of the mood, personality, mode of being, which courses through our conscious experience, but also is the manifestation of the content within the framework as well.
We are always acting with intention, out of desire, and the intentional object always holds a place of representation once it is conceptualized in the mental stream of conscious thought. The revelation, uncovering, or discovery of those contents, activity, systems, concepts, which hold the most meaning in relation to each other, in their total relation to us, is what we should seek to describe for our formulation of a value structure. The necessary interconnection between values, their place of priority, the discarding of lesser and the superseding of greater values must be carried out on an individual level, not only would it be useful to find what currently represents one’s values (based on time spent in pursual), but it is necessary for the optimization of conscious direction, our conscious experience, and thus our wellbeing, that we formulate what we would like for our value structure to be. What is an “ideal” value structure we wish to body.
With this “ideal” in mind we can further seek to optimize our time in proportion to this value structure. Thus the famous Jocko Willink maxim; discipline equals freedom. By disciplining our time and effort into those things which we most value, we are effectively exercising the freedom of the will to “choose” what its content is. A well-structured life which reflects the consciously formulated value system is far from being constraining, on the contrary, it constrains the pursuit of values which one doesn’t value, while providing the framework for a life which accurately reflects one’s values, providing the optimal structure which can be recalibrated with experience and further philosophical work towards improvement of the value system. By disciplining oneself to follow the consciously formulated values, we create the possibility of deeper pursual of what is meaningful to us.
With the value structure as our guiding star, conscious direction can be applied toward the content which is in alignment with what is meaningful to us. How are we to be confident in our pursual of such ventures? It is based on the work with which we have put in towards the description of values. If at any point we question our confidence in the path we are following, in the experience directed towards values, if it ever occurs to us that the path isn’t optimal, all we have to work with is the experiential knowledge and the philosophical application towards our conceptualization of values, and their relationship to each other in formulating a meaningful life. If this occurs, more work is to be done.
While mindfulness requires diligent effort towards directing the gaze of conscious awareness towards the content of the present moment arising in consciousness, a phenomenological analysis requires much more psychologically rooted tools to perform at a truth revealing level (optimal/accurate/useful in degrees). While we can acquire the benefits of mindfulness through attention to the present, the requirements for a phenomenological analysis require intellectual clarity, knowledge of various scientific disciplines, non-contradictory logical reasoning, causal intuition, time and diligence directed by the mental gaze towards an authentic unravelling of the structure of the psyche, in short they require the ability to concentrate and pursue abstract correlates in their relation to the manifest contents discovered in mindfulness. This necessarily entails work, time, and discipline if one is to uncover the essential foundations for the noeses from which the noema (Husserl’s Terminology) are correlated and initially perceived as inextricably connected.
I wish to pursue the meaning, the noeses, the mode of Being, and its essential attributes for an experiential noema of, namely: entering into a Vipassana present moment meditation (Basic Vipassana Meditation). Now, first and foremost, I must recognize that the experience is of a specific differentiated nature, meaning, that I recognize my transition into a mode of awareness directed upon the present moment which is distinctly different from the previous mode of being, for which I conceptualize in my phenomenological analysis as an experience of mindfulness meditation. The goal for me, here, is to recognize the essence of the mode of Being which enabled and embodied such a subjective experience, and to uncover why.
First I analyze the situation for what it is, through recollection in memory and reflection upon the experiential content. Once I have clearly in mind the content I was experiencing in conscious awareness at the time of the period of mindfulness, I can circumnavigate the experience to get a clear view of the noema with which we are interested in attaining the correlated noesis. The multiple perspective exploration which ensues is the part of the work we must undergo to get a clear and authentic representation of the content. Here a reliance on clear, judgmental, unbiased memory is a preferred indifferent to us, as certain acts of reflection we may be unable to untangle from the truth of the matter. It is preferred in that it directly relates to an optimal outcome, and indifferent in that we recognize that the ability to do so is inherent in our intellectual capacities, and may…unfortunately…be out of our control in the time being, yet ultimately able to be improved through persistence and experience in performing phenomenological analyses, as well as with the increase of wisdom and knowledge in related mental faculties (logic / reason / intellectual concentration). To be able to perform such an endeavor we must “bracket” the “natural world” as described by Husserl, the degree to which we are able to separate the influence of a natural standpoint, or the unmindful mode of being, is crucial to the accuracy of the conclusion acquired. The amount of clarity in our recollection, and the resistance to any narrating and “Ego” driven defining of the content of the noema enable us to better or worse produce a clear, more accurate phenomenological result.
With the noema defined and held in our conscious gaze, that of the Vipassana mediation experience, we probe into our intuition to disclose what the intentionality of the acts performed in the noema are stemming from, or how the noematic content relates to the noetic content, their connection and formulation. For what purpose did we pursue such activity? From what mode of Being did it stem from? Why would we spend time doing such an act? Obviously the answer to these questions are differentiated in response to the individual, his circumstances, and the specific noema in space and time in which we are analyzing. Thus, my uncovering of the phenomena of mindfulness is related to this singular experience, and the work put in is towards the end in direct regard to that singular experience. The results therefore disclose information related to that mode of being intuited as being preliminary and underlying to the noema, but, also, they disclose a possible mode of being which can generally be stated as being able to manifest across the realm of future experience. While we discover the noesis of that singular noema in the analysis, we recognize it as an integral part of our psyche, and thus as having the potential of emerging again as a correlate to any future experience, and more specifically to acts of similar nature to the one inquired upon.
The intentionality in the case described is personally intuited in conceptualizations (word representations of “real” phenomena) based upon our acquired total synthesis of Being, containing specific knowledge with which the individual utilizes in his description and exploration of the phenomenological correlates to the experience. Language and its epistemology in regards to the individual is therefore an important aspect of any abstraction. Different perspectives and explanations are possible as being uncovered, as all being parts of the whole correlated explanation of the mode of Being relevant. Thus, we can expect always a partial conclusion, as the limit of knowledge and the kind of representation used (definition of words used in conceptualization is varied according to the individual). In my personal case I concluded, after work towards unravelling, a number of intuitions which may partially constitute the nature of the noeses underlying the phenomena of Vipassana meditation, in its manifestation and presentation in memory discovered by myself. The implications of such findings, and their relevancy towards further explanation across multiple disciplines, is later to be expounded upon.
I here wish to expound my personal findings to explore what I found, the implications, again, will later be preliminarily sketched out. In looking towards the intention I intuited that a mode of being of intentionality was prevalent throughout the experience. The conscious thought arose in which directed my being towards actualizing a mindfulness practice, and thus I habitually followed previous attempts at actualizing a Vipassana mediation, as I have up to this point acquired. The sitting still, eyes closed, and directing of the gaze into the present moment followed this consciously directed thought of wishing to perform a Vipassana meditation. Attention was focused upon the fleeting, transient contents of consciousness as it presented an awareness of perceptions of sensations and sensory content such as hearing, bodily pressure upon the chair, thoughts used in describing the present, attention brought to non-conceptually arising observation of the breath, sounds, feeling. I witnessed thoughts appear, I witnessed attention change. In retrospect there was always a content to which I could possibly be attentive to, although for brief moments my initial intention of pursuing a constant awareness of the present moment (a general guideline for Vipassana) was broken by forgetfulness of the practice as a thought or mental formation hindered my remembrance of the practice, but eventually was brought back to the attention upon the task at hand of being mindful. The variation in the content of consciousness in pursuing itself, varied in accuracy as it drifted between the awareness of the present, and non-awareness of its own content. These two poles make up a general description of the noema from start (that of entering into the mode of being) to end (that of exiting the mode of being and transitioning to a phenomenological analysis of the noema which had passed). The noema has been roughly, simply, conceptualized.
As there was a content connected to consciousness, there is a content of the underlying mode of being, the noesis, to that noema. Where consciousness was intent on pursuing Vipassana meditation, why was it pursuing Vipassana meditation? The answer lies in a multitude of phenomenological reasons relating to the nature of the mode of being which so desires such an experience (Phenomenology of Desire). This desire we will later expound upon. Several I will here explore as being uncovered in intuitional analyses. The mode of being is characterized by a will for character development, for becoming a better person, embodying the virtues with which to act upon in an optimal way for said character development. Upon investigation I discovered that from a doxological perspective (of my inherent intellectual belief structure) that I believe the pursuit of mindfulness to be relating and influential towards the goal of the improvement of character. Thus, part of the noetic content making up the whole noesis isn’t only of intentionality constitution, but also of doxic positionality (my Being’s relation to what I believe). I, through whatever reason (a causal chain of connectivity leads to our current belief structure), also hold as high in my meaning structure, or value hierarchy, the pursuit of character development (probably a conceptually acquired content stemming from content such as experiential knowledge and practical evaluation of Aristotle’s Nichomechean Ethics). Thus, the mode of being described as character development has revealed itself as containing noetic content of intentionality, doxic positionality (my relation to my beliefs), and value pursuit (my pursuit of a value which I have personally acquired as something hierarchical more important to me than other experiences). The result of such content in experience being the actualization of the underlying desire for character development manifest in the Vipassana meditation noema which I experienced.
Now we look to analyze why I contain such a doxic, value, and intentional structure. While the noema, the experience itself, is put into the highest position of concreteness, a relation to the recollection in the awareness of the memory of the experience would be in the second order of concreteness (it loses something of the initial concrete experience in the conceptual and mental formation), and in the third dimension of abstraction we have intuited the noetic structure which we believe to underlie the initial 1st dimension experience based upon the 2nd dimension experience (of recollection). The 3rd dimensional conceptual abstraction defines parts of the contents of the noesis available to us through the 2nd dimension and is itself able to be subject to phenomenological analyses, just as much as any other noema. But that’s a side note just to convey two things, namely, that each step in the phenomenological analyses is itself a moment which can be phenomenologically analyzed in its own noematic content, and also from that to conclude that the limit of content available to be phenomenologically analyzed is thus limitless in extension.
Continuing down our analysis we enter a 4th dimension of analysis, as to what purpose the noesis, the mode of being, which contains (in our partial exploration) the content of the underlying mode of being producing the noema, is itself produced by. To this we must enter into much broader and more profound territory, the full exploration of requires much scientific insight, and the space of which is open to further investigation in the fields of sociology, evolutionary biology, formal biology, psychology, and philosophy. As Merleau Ponty points out, there are many senses to which a phenomenon gives, multiple significant attributes that are interrelated and constituting of the phenomenon, many interrelated perspectives from which to gaze upon it, all of which simultaneously constitute the phenomena, yet we can find, that some give a broader defining of its characteristics than others do, although, in actuality, they cannot be separated. On a basic level it is an automatic habitual intuition, for me, to explain the noetic content thus described in evolutionary biological terms. Underlying all intentionality and modes of being, and in their modification, and their discovered content, is a persistent desire on behalf of the organism which I find myself as (Dasein (thrown)), as well as the genetic makeup, to “desire” (in affect) to preserve itself, recreate itself, and accurately recreate itself. By desire here in quotations we are referring to the biological correlate of the anthropomorphic sense of desire and its synonymous connotation of “willing/wanting/striving”, which, in effect, is attempting to achieve something. While we can view acquisition of character traits and thus modes of being underlying them in part to society, culture, past experience, the circumstances, time; I initially look towards the concrete and most fundamental underlying substratum for my personal exploration of this 4th dimension. This biological “desire” evolutionarily is beneficial in its manifestation in the mode of being of character development in that, (I believe), through making myself a better person I can better navigate existence (insight into nature of reality through Vipassana), enabling me to become a stronger, wiser individual (in my reduction of suffering and improving of wellbeing). This biological “desire” underlying the manifestation of the mode of being of character development also simultaneously allows the individual to be better able to avoid death, sickness, injury, in short, that which is contrary to the continuation of my genetic material, and necessarily the individual with which I am. The preservation and safety of the genome is thus satisfied in this explanation. Also, the second characteristic of genetic “purpose”, the procreation and replication of the genetic material, find their explanation in the noema and its coinciding noesis. By embodying what the individual believes to be character enhancing he is simultaneously embarking to become a more viable candidate for procreation, in thus manifesting the mode of being previously described, the individual (in my case unconsciously, yet consciously uncovered) “believes” (proof through action) in the pursuit of such activities which are produced by a character development mode of being, as being themselves tools towards character development and thus to the replication of his genes. This satisfies the second requirement in the biological imperative.
This rudimentary exploration towards the phenomenological underpinnings of a specific noematic experience is far from conclusive, but has provided information towards which I can use to understand how and why and from what mode of being the content of my experience is possible to be originating in. The conscious pursuit of ever more accurate descriptions of such a nature, indeed the meaning as to why the entire phenomenological investigation can be performed, is found in the insights gleaned by our own self-examination and realization, as well as has its utilization in the various scientific fields; psychology, biology, as well as obviously philosophy. With logic, reason, and intuition as our guides, following a phenomenological methodology, we are able to piece together the underlying characterizations of modes of being from a reduction from the “things themselves” experientially in any given noema. As the intuitions are discovered philosophically, the deeper explorations and explanations of the questions it is able to discover are thus open to pursuance by the various scientific disciplines. The verification of initial insights, the pursuit of answers to novel questions discovered in phenomenological analysis, and the subjective revelation of objective truths intuitive through persistent work in phenomenological analysis is something which can benefit anyone who contains the psychic imperative to seek the truth. The intentionality behind such an imperative leaves itself open to important and necessary research, across various disciplines, of which the answers can be valuable in their usefulness and beneficiality for us all (I believe).
We unconsciously shift modes of being as ever changing circumstances prompt the direction of our essential Being. We all are unconsciously shifting from state to state in the “natural being”, that is, in direct opposition to a “phenomenological being” which recognizes the content as stemming from the distinct modes of being available to our psyche. Somewhere in between is the “mindful being” which is able to recognize the content stemming from the “phenomenological mode of being” or the noesis. The mindful mode fails to recognize the noeses. The phenomenological mode recognizes the mode, but only retrospectively. In directing attention towards the content manifesting in another person’s intentional content (acts such as speech / actions / what we perceive in others as displaying) we can place rudimentary bounds on the state of being they are displaying. The problem with recognizing our own noesis in the moment is that we only apply conceptual definitions to states which already happened, whether they were moments passed, or quite far removed from the present. The present constantly advances, I would say for practical purposes, it advances seamlessly, as our mental processing and subjective experience of it, for practical purposes, is a seamless, transient, impermanent flow of phenomena as they are altered “by the moment”. The smallest piece of the present we are able to experience falls somewhere on a timeline of “Planck time”, with which is smaller than the brain processing power we contain is able to visualize or notice. For all intents and purposes, the moment is not able to be captured, and as it is constantly being altered (the contents of consciousness is constantly being altered) it places us in a very difficult position in regard to noticing our current noesis. What we can do, is notice what noesis we previously were in, and by so noticing, enter into a phenomenological analytic mode of being, which we know we are contained in, if we are performing a phenomenological analysis. Without conscious attention being focused upon the noesis of the previous moment, we are simply not present in the phenomenological analyzing mode of Being, and if we are so seeking such specifications we know we are in a phenomenological analyzing mode of Being. In other words, we are only mindful when we are mindful. And we are only aware of our current state of being when we are looking for it, in which we can define our current mode of being as that which is looking for its current mode of being. Any other mode of being is manifested in a way which is happening, yet is not consciously found, as our consciousness isn’t directed towards an awareness of it. We cannot find what we are not seeking, yet the only thing we can find, is that we are seeking.
The only mode of being which we are phenomenologically able to analyze as being our present mode of being, is the phenomenological analytic mode of being. Where previous phenomenological reductions are made in reference to manifestations occurring in the past, to previous noemas, their content, actions, speech, thought, mental formations, etc., and the classification of such phenomena into a coherent noesis, and then through the reduction of such noesis in order to distinguish its essential characteristics, what we here are doing is searching for the mode of being, or noeses, underlying our current present moment. Now what mode of being can be discoverable in the present moment? Only that which we are looking for. The only method we have in which to look for such a mode of being is a phenomenological analysis. Thus, when we intentionally direct our phenomenological analysis towards the content of the present moment, the only thing we truly know about our current moment mode of being is that we are conducting a phenomenological analysis, thus we uncover that our present moment mode of being is a phenomenologically analytic mode of being. This is formulated with the caveat of time as being free flowing, as it is in our subjective experience, and disregards the physics of “Planck time” as time moving in “chunks” which are unrecognizable in conscious experience. Also, this doesn’t exclude the possibility that we are also simultaneously inhabiting another mode of being, it simply states that the only mode of being we can discover as referring to our present moment, is the phenomenological analytic mode of being. If we think of phenomenology as a search engine with all informational and experiential content appearing in the results, and we become aware that we are using google, we necessarily are aware of google being open in the browser, regardless if there are other tabs, what is happening in the present moment is solely the one tab of google (as the phenomenological analysis). While there are other modes occurring in the present moment, they are necessarily unknown to us in this present moment, while of course, phenomenology can discover this retrospectively, it cannot discriminate and parse out the simultaneous modes of being which overlap in any given moment.
Mindfulness in its traditional application is a mode of being in which the practitioner becomes aware of the awareness of consciousness in the present moment, i.e. the practitioner becomes aware of the contents of consciousness as they present themselves to the field of consciousness. Attention is directed toward phenomena as they arise, and subsequently fade away to be replaced. Important insights are gleaned from such practice, such as the impermanence of mental phenomena and their inherent transitoriness, the lack of a self – as the contents being ushered into consciousness’s gaze are not being determined by the subject (the practitioner) – and the root of such phenomena is found to be in the very general care structure, or ability to desire. Upon closer introspection and further development of the practice, the root of suffering, and the all-pervasive nature of suffering, are discovered. While mindfulness is useful to the realization in first-hand experience of such immutable truths, experientially we solely are limited to insights gleaned from the gaze into the present moment. Mindfulness enables further recognition of the nature of consciousness, but the story is not completed by such pursuits, it is only partially informed. (Mindfulness and Phenomenology)
In practicing mindfulness, or Vipassana, we become aware of the noema (Husserl’s terminology), or the conscious mental manifestation of phenomena as viewed subjectively. The noema is the experiential aspect of the present moment, whatever content may arise is a given noema. It is the act itself of what is intentioned by our conscious directing in the present moment. It is the content of experience, as we are able to view it. We can push mindfulness to a higher resolution image of these contents through retrospective phenomenological analysis of the content manifested in the present moment. This analysis is done through discrimination, retrospectively, upon the mode of Being, the field of consciousness, which gives rise to the phenomena available to be gleaned in mindfulness.
The pursuit of this content, that of the noesis, is purely the job of the phenomenologist, for purposes which range from psychological to metaphysical, from the advance of our understanding to our personal development. In discerning phenomena using a mindfulness process, we direct our attentional gaze using both subjective intuition and logical reduction of the phenomena to find their essence, i.e. we seek to discover the noesis which is present in the manifestation of the noema, which is available to us introspectively. The groundwork for such phenomena can be found tricky to reduce from the neomatic content, which are ever transient in their appearing, yet philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, and Hegel have sought to classify, organize, describe, and relate the different modes of being and their progression through their influential works.
While the phenomenological method has been dictated in many forms, the practical implementation of a phenomenological examination in the course of a detailed practice has been lacking in a structure which is available to be practiced by the general public.
This is a topic which I am seeking to pursue, how to conceptualize a process for the identification of noeses behind noema, and for the ability to utilize such information once it is acquired towards the promotion of the wellbeing of the individual, as well as a higher resolution of the truth of our own, of my own, of the phenomenologist’s own, consciousness, and thus of reality. This is truly a task for those who wish to seek the truth of their Being, and while mindfulness meditation and practice opens the door, phenomenological analysis into the groundwork of conscious modes of Bring which lays behind the phenomena is truly stepping through the door. While science can depict aspects of the neural underpinnings of the cortical mass which can be linked to emotion, thought, and relational hierarchical reasoning, and other modes of sensual representation in their displays to consciousness, the phenomenologists and thus the philosopher seeks a task which only he himself can pursue. These grounds are subjectively discoverable and give us an insight into the objective realization of the structure of our consciousness, and our Being. Only through retrospective phenomenological analysis into the information gleaned through a mindfulness practice is it to be acquired.
The implications of such pursuit are vast, what insight and beneficiality there is to be gained through recognition of structural modes of being which lay behind the perceived phenomena arising in consciousness is something to be discovered, which can be discovered, and we would be wise not to ignore them. The directing of our current mode of being towards such content necessarily places us in a new mode of being separate from the (time/content) to be analyzed, allowing for an infinite regress of content to be explored. What immediately is clear is that modes of being can overlap, and several can be present within the present moment, dependent upon the content thus produced. It is the task of the philosopher to parse out the constituent defining characteristics of such modes of beings, and furthermore to the interrelatedness of the modes, viz. how they interact, and how the separate thesis’s which are used to describe them overlay in their totality to form the synthesis which comprised the synthetic unitary mode of consciousness which contains them. This synthetic unitary mode is all encompassing in its definition, and applies to the field of which all modes of Being are connected, yet they are discretionary in their arising, due to causal factors which we can also further elaborate on. It is clear that this enterprise is vast in its scope and deep in its implications, but the utilization of it, and the insights which are possible to be discovered, appear to be ever vaster.
In reference to the beneficiality of such practice, here noted as phenomenological practice, we are going to base the further discussion upon the insights gleaned through Vipassana, or as will further be described as mindfulness (as the insight meditation practice focusing attention upon the contents of consciousness). In mindfulness we learn how certain contents, and habitual formations arise, and in response to what triggers them. We learn how to cope with such phenomena in a way which is beneficial to us, or in alignment with our morals, or preconceived value and care structures. We can apply our value, moral, and care structures to the navigation not only in response to the shifting contents of our consciousness, but to the modes of being discoverable and thus subsequently recognizable in their manifestation through phenomenological practice. E.g. we discover through the exclamation of certain truths, or of conceptual exertions of truth-claims (valued as certain through our doxic (belief) structure) as being contained in a mode of being of certainty. Thus we state something with absolute confidence, perhaps in a conversation, as being categorically true. Upon reflection upon that content which manifests itself in our awareness through being mindful of the moment, we can later reflect upon such memory, or stored representation of the present moment, and seek to reduce the mode of consciousness which we inhabited in the moment of exertion. Of course the topic on hand is relevant to the mode of being we find ourselves in, but we strip that away further, and find that beneath the content, beneath the circumstances, beneath the external and internal causality which conditions the response in us of exerting what we believe to be a truth-claim, that we are inhabiting a mode of consciousness of “certainty”.
If our moral and value structure is thus formulated to be one of fallibility (Intro to Fallibilism), in the spirit of continual progression and abhorrence to dogmatic claims, we find the mode of certainty to be truly dissonant in respect to our value structure. Thus we can consciously direct our efforts to avoid pursuing the mode of being thus recognized as “being certain” and through conscious training become habitualized to act otherwise than the prior causally condition habitual response. We are not looking in grounding our actions to be counter to the manifestation of the content which is elicited by the mode of being of certainty, but instead to be counter to the mode of “being certain” itself. Such an effort in affecting our mode of being will subsequently produce actions and intentions which are directed from a mode of being counter to the original mode of being, and properly in line with our conscious value structure of remaining fallible.
In a similar sense as the Buddhist works at conditioning himself away from unwholesome thoughts and towards the propagation of wholesome thoughts, and likewise in speech, views, and actions, we seek to condition ourselves towards wholesome modes of being, and away from unwholesome modes of being. Thus in the case where such further encounters with the mode of being of certainty, we can quickly recognize the triggers to its manifestation, its formal manifestation, and in response, move away from making neomatic claims (actual acts) and seek to inhabit the mode of being fallible, in order to produce a reactive response which is in line with our moral and value structure, which isn’t overpowered by the “archetype”, so to speak, of certainty, but instead that of fallibility. This mode of being more accurately represents the synthetic unitary mode of Being, to me at least (in this personal example) which is a more authentic representation of the totality of who we are, rather than the one dominant mode being which seeks to overexert itself, namely, that mode of “certainty”.
In this way we can, in addition to mindfulness, consciously direct ourselves towards the implication of a phenomenological practice, the fruits of which can be used in a practical manner not only to provide information depicting a higher resolution image of the truth of our Being, and thus reality, not only towards the beneficiality of our wellbeing in the navigation away from dominant modes of being which we contain yet don’t desire to be prominent, but we additionally can give a more authentic representation of ourselves in our thoughts, speech, and actions, through the practical application of its findings, and work towards habitualized, consciously directed, practice. The progression of our understanding, in our pursuit for truth, and in the realization and authentication of our moral and hierarchical value structures is of paramount importance for the individualization, and progression of the individual, to becoming more fully actualized in his conduct and cognitive apprehension of reality (Value System Instantiation). Thus if we seek to be moral, and seek truth, we should endeavor to push past mindfulness practice into the newly discovered field of phenomenological practice.
In summary, what underlies the present moment act, or mental activity, which presents itself in mindfulness, is the type or mode of acting which is taking place. Here we are defining the content as the noema, and the acting, or mode of consciousness producing the noema, as noesis. (Husserl’s Terminology) The noema is consciously directed toward an object, whether in that moment it be memory, a thought, a perception, a feeling of sensual origination, etc. The mode of being giving rise to such content, is described linguistically as remembering, thinking, perceiving, feeling, etc. What we seek to discover in our analysis is first, the noema, secondly, the noesis, thirdly, the conditions and essential nature of the noesis, fourthly, the causal connectedness of underlying factors producing the noesis (external circumstances, inner disposition, biological/hereditary/cortical processing (neuroscientific explanations)), fifthly, how to navigate the reduction and the instigation of modes of being or noesis in a consciously directed way in order to give an optimal result in our experience of life and the manifestations of our actions, which is dictated by acquired knowledge, and implemented using practical wisdom (phronesis).
Where the intention from which acts in the noema stem from are to be uncovered through discovery of the noesis present in their manifestations, we can also look to what is manifesting the noesis itself. This entails seeing the causal relation between modes of being changing, whether it be directed through conscious instigation, environmental factors, or necessary progression. We can seek to reduce from the given information present to us what are the causal conditions which allow the synthetic unitary consciousness, or the Totality of our Being, to give rise to the mode of being discoverable in the noesis. We can find this to be conditioned through unconsciously formulated pathway of reciprocity to present situations, which has roots in biological processes and, in short, the totality of our experience through life (starting with hereditary and environmental factors).
While these are surely relevant to us, what is more valuable is the course correcting away from sub optimal, or dissonance causing modes of being (in contrast to our consciously formulated value structure). Consciousness is constantly undergoing an updating process as new experience and data is collected through our perspectival horizon, this datum enters into its triage, which is collected through the value system’s discrimination, and in turn the filtration system itself is modified. This modification of the value structures filtration of perceived content subsequently affects the relevant experience presented to us in our subjective experience of consciousness itself. We are interested in how to affect this system consciously, in the most optimal way for our Being, that which we are in our entirety. This is to be done through the aforementioned noesis recognition, a conscious system of noeses which are discerned as more optimal, and the consciously directed self-conditioning of the instigation of modes of being in line with the pre thought-out value structure. Just as we learn anything through experience, practice, and self-training, the same principle applies to the adjustment of our mode of being. Once we learn to recognize the manifestation of an unwanted or wanted mode of being, and are able to conscious recognize such content through the noema present to us in proper mindfulness, we are able to utilize that information towards the cessation of unwanted modes of being, and the arising of wanted modes of being. The desire structure which is inherent in all content is not able to be avoided, or replaced by simply the “denial of the will” as Schopenhauer puts it, as even such a denial is a manifestation of the desire structure – such phenomena as our desire structure we must learn to live with, and utilize to our benefit, through the phenomenological practice directed towards the modes of being which are of greater interest to us in our hierarchical structure. Thus we can utilize the tool which causes us suffering, in order to minimize, or move to a mode of being which contains less suffering, through directing our mode of being in this way.
Where is the proper direction to head? Which modes of Being do we value more than others? How do we manifest different modes of Being? How do we find the synthetic unitary consciousness with which we should seek to authentically represent in our speech and actions through instigation of proper modes of Being? All these questions are relevant and discoverable to the philosopher. And thus an existential question is posited, towards which end ought we head? And using which metric should we follow? It is here that the individual philosopher must make a stand. He must formulate answers to these questions, and seek to embody them, for the development and authentic representation of his being depends on it. We can move in degrees towards the peak of the mountain which we so choose to climb, while one may choose a pathway designated by the current cultural zeitgeist, another may choose the hedonistic peak, while another may follow a whim, it is up to us to decide. There is morality in question, there is truth in question, and there is living in alignment with what we will, there is also, most importantly, that pathway which leads to optimal wellbeing for us. This path towards optimal wellbeing may necessarily involve suffering in its formulation, and is in no way opting for a utopia of the mind which is universal, what is truly the best mode to inhabit for one person, may not be for another, and there is no form in which to generalize such conclusions.
While moral realism holds ground if it is based upon solid foundations, as formulated by Sam Harris, that doesn’t mean that we all will be competent enough to discover what is truly best for us, although our degree of success will always be placed upon a spectrum towards the unknowable height of perfection. What phenomenological analysis enables us to do is to discover the roots of our mode of Being, and what phenomenological practice does is allow us to condition ourselves in the direction we wish to head. While every path objectively is meaningless, and it always is full of meaning to us, subjectively. Thus it is of paramount importance that we discover what is meaningful to us, which modes of being we as the individual who has to subjectively experience this life must further experience. This information, and this uncovering, will allow us to formulate the location in which we are to direct our phenomenological practice towards achieving.
The expression of our inner state in the form of our actions / content of consciousness isn’tof primary importance to us here, what we are more interested in is the mode of being from which all content stems from. For we can alter our speech and actions within a given domain of Being, and they will all reflect the same state, albeit in slightly altered forms. What we must optimize is the mode of Being which we inhabit given a certain set of problems / circumstances which we seek to oppose. There are better or worse solutions to the problems in our lives, navigable to lesser or greater degrees. What we must seek to find is an optimal mode of being from which the appropriate response can flow from.
I find the danger in strict dogmatism in regards to moving forward with utmost confidence in a frame of mind of infallibility. This, I believe, is a trademark of the modern man, and of utmost importance to be corrected from. The archetype of the tyrant, the man who claims to know the answer, the soul who seeks to dominate reality with his current understanding. This mode of Being runs rampant, and plagues the development of the individual to grow, learn, and optimize his current understanding. It is not merely the claim that we know the best solution, nor is it solely claiming that we simply “don’t know”, which is surely true but inconclusive. The mode of being I think that can best correct, and improve the individual, is to have logically conclusive beliefs, in which harmonize with the conceptual unity of the individuals metaphysical doxic structure, yet, simultaneously, the individual must hold that these beliefs are merely beliefs. This doesn’t mean that knowledge is unattainable, it solely means that whether we have true knowledge, or are ignorant, that there is a possibility that at the very most this information is partial. There is always more “background” truths to be uncovered, there is always more information to be had, more time to be spent, more “wisdom” to be encountered and utilized towards a “better” optimal solution. We may be truly correct, objectively, yet when one maintains a fallibilistic mode of being in regard to truth claims, what happens is that we gain a pragmatic advantage in every area with which we are ignorant, whether it be in areas of known unknowns, or unknown unknowns, yet while passionately holding a belief, we do not resign from action and evaluation, or in decisiveness. We lose certainty and we gain every possibility for ever growing inner expansion. If we don’t hold this mode of being close, we risk losing out, on something we may not even know we are missing. The only knowledge and information we have to work with in response to novel problems arising necessarily stems from experience, and it is natural to seek to move forward with preconceived knowledge in the confrontation with chaos. While we must not stagnant, we must also hold firmly in mind that any decision we make, any truth-claim we state, can be improved upon, can be better informed, can come from a mode of being which altogether transcends our current one. The amount of time taken in pursuit of more optimal solutions, and towards which issues we direct our conscious attention to analyzing, falls under the domain of wisdom. While we must look to overcome challenges, if something is a challenge to us, it necessarily implies an unknown. In order to combat it we must seek to recognize that there is an unknown, and transfer it into our conceptual framework for “known unknown”. This requires relinquishment of the mode of being of absolute certainty.
We begin a phenomenological analysis by bracketing all that is included in the transcendent domain of experience, as that which is wholly external to the subjective experience of consciousness, which here is defined as “immanent”. We bracket judgments, perceptions, beliefs, scientific truths, and externally gained insights (includes forms of speech). External content isn’t our focus, neither is our perception of appearances, only what the content of the consciousness doing the perceiving is essentially consisting of. In short, we do not deny or affirm the validity of the transcendent world (of that which exists beyond consciousness) we merely remove ourselves from the domain of the consistent striving to describe it, in order to focus on the essential nature of consciousness. In so doing, we neutralize any belief and judgment, and remove any causal explanation for conscious phenomena which we had acquired from a non-phenomenological method. What is left over after the bracketing is the space of immanent consciousness, which, unfortunately, if we wish to convey the experience of, and relate an essential structure, we must use a form of communication such as language which itself is not implicitly originating in consciousness, but is itself produced by consciousness as a coherent string of symbolic representation of any kind (mathematic, scientific, logical).
Although the objects in the “bracketed world” to which the form of communication we use is directed at describing isn’t itself part of the phenomenological structure which we are seeking to analyze, the object of the “unbracketed world” is for us, it does exist for us, in that it lies within the perceptible horizon of our gaze. The communication used in that representation is an experiential representation of the underlying subconscious structure, and the only insight we can gleam in a conceptual form of which produces a logically shareable structure depicting this inner immanent domain requires the use of the communication system which we contain in the acquired skill of language (used in tangent with other cortical structures in representation). To represent accurately phenomena outside of the immanent domain that isn’t itself part of the phenomenological Being “of consciousness”, is wholly the job of the Sciences. Thus the language which arises in conscious experience (thought / speech) is a phenomenon which is an acquired trait through social and biological conditioning methods, and is an output of the Being which we are in the way any intentional act, or content of our psyche (which is available in awareness, self-reflectively), also respectively is. The phenomena of language itself in its relation to the foundational, essential aspect of our psyche which gives rise to it, is a direct expression of that subconscious structure and bears a direct relation to it. In analyzing its arising in the manner just described, we can look for ways in which the experience of language in thought, in its manifestation, can point to truths about the nature of consciousness in its essential aspects.
The consciousness which gives rise to language in the form of thought, which we probably recognize as conceptualization of other phenomena, whether past, present or future, is contained in a mode of consciousness specific to the content of the thought just produced, and has many traits which separate it from other modes of non-conceptual mental states, or modes of Being, which is an area for deep inquiry and further expansion. The causal and correlative nature of different modes of Being in respect to each other, and their relation to the unit of the synthetic whole, is a web of causal interconnections which, if properly differentiated and sufficiently analyzed, we can tease apart to recognize individual relations as they relate to a phenomena available in experience.
So, we opt to attempt a description of the essentiality of consciousness and its different modes of which we are able to experience, and we can discover phenomenological truth which, due to bracketing, is far from verifiable outside of the context of our own experience, but since we have discovered it in our own experience, its validity is therefore never to be diminished as the truth of our perception of our own consciousness. We must use the gaze of conscious awareness in order to grasp conscious manifestations, or phenomena arising in consciousness (Mindfulness and Phenomenology), and we must use language to attempt to give a description of the phenomena and their arising and subjectively verify their place within the realm of consciousness. The findings in such a realm of inquiry are potentially limitless as the quantity of experience, place in time which we discover, and the reduction towards the isolation of experience is continually progressing. In other words, every moment of conscious experience is potentially a subject to phenomenological analysis, on the first degree, but even an analysis upon the consciousness which itself is performing the “first level” phenomenological analysis (a phenomenally directed mode of Being) is possible to be undertaken, in a “second level” phenomenological analysis, ad infinitum. Therefore, every moment which contains content in consciousness can be subject to a reduction and separation from the external world, and viewed “as it is itself” and thus we can discover thematic elements which constitute its essence and place within the sphere of the synthetic unity of consciousness.
Upon further work, we can later document the discoveries in the phenomenological sphere, and post analysis unbracket the scientific tools and discoveries which conventional knowledge has provided us with. The application and attempt of explanation of the phenomenologically derived “fact” by means of the now unbracketed realm of resources may provide insightful into the application, lineal development, causation, origination, and biological constituents which can be related to the phenomena. That being said, it would in practice be the applying of objective knowledge to subjectively acquired datum. Thus we can look at the intentionality, belief structure, or value structure, which we find to be acting upon our consciousness of a certain object, found to be characteristic of all experience in a phenomenological depiction of the present moment, and look for a description in evolutionary biology towards how the genes would benefit in survivability or profundity by the ability to manifest such behaviors in its host organism’s survival machine. We can apply psychological tools towards the optimization of such mechanisms, and test the efficiency of said modifications upon the subjective structure (how different value/belief structures affect subjective wellbeing). The realm of application for subjectively discovered and philosophically expounded descriptions of the nature of consciousness has real, objective consequences which, other than a mere depiction of reality as initially posited by the philosopher, can be used for practical expansion in every other domain of inquiry.
The conceptualization of phenomenological truths which we can discover in the essence of modes of Being which constitute consciousness, allows us to visualize the foundations for which every objective realm of inquiry necessarily stems from. The thought, the idea, the perception, the action, the speech, the phenomena, is only manifested through the human consciousness. The essential components of consciousness are metaphorically the filter between reality and our conscious understanding of reality, and it is here which is the root of all objective discovery. It is therefore not only beneficial but wholly necessary to have a phenomenological grasp of the Being which is the “background” to the arising of all subjective experience, and thus the point of departure towards which any truth-statement or conceptualization of reality must pass through. Consciousness itself must be thoroughly described as an aspect of the reality which it is part of, it is essential in any truth-statement, and it is always there lurking as the mediator between what is objectively discoverable and what is able to be subjectively experienced (including thoughts / formulations of transcendental reality i.e. what is not immanent consciousness, what is other than consciousness itself).
Original, naive, “natural” beliefs about the conditions of consciousness erode under further scrutiny when the proper aspects of understanding are bracketed. Ideas such as free will, or the positing of a self who controls consciousness, can become intuited as nonsensical when one is mindful of the essence of consciousness in its separateness from preconceived beliefs. Free will isn’t a phenomenon, and thus never presents itself phenomenologically, it only appears to be a concept that makes sense on surface level subjective intuition. There is no sense of the universe or logical explanation as to how such a thing could even exist, it simply is impossible and at a conclusively demonstrated (through phenomenological analysis) level its non-existence could be no clear. This doesn’t mean the idea of “freewill”, or a belief in it doesn’t exist, as we can obviously gleam from social interaction, most people act as if they have freewill, and it’s arising as a concept is merely a subjective misuse of language, and a fundamental misunderstanding into the nature of the organism which inhabits our consciousness. In the unbracketed sphere of the “natural world” we find use of the concept of referring to “ourselves” and of the notion that “I” am in control of this organism’s manifestations, and we use such forms of speech to interact with others in a way that holds meaning in terms of practicality of ownership and responsibility. But, as to the essence of consciousness producing such states, and to the fact of the matter itself, we find that a confusion is found in the distinction “I am directing my attention”, from the true notion of the phenomena being “attention is directional, and being directed”.
A similar line of thought holds true for other contents produced by our fundamental belief and language structures, such as the belief in the existence of ideas such as depicted in supernatural claims, as well as religious certainties and the notion of a “self”. Different modes of consciousness are related to different degrees of “certainty” in form of “possibility”, “probability”, and “doubt”. The problem I see which should be crucially examined is our mode of being in “certainty”, which leaves us closed off for further investigation and truth-revelation. As long as we avoid any state of “certainty” and always acknowledge the probability of the relationship between our conceptualization of reality in its matching up to reality itself, including probability of inaccuracy, we remain in a state of consciously instituted fallibility, and thus are open to error correction and further development. In discovering which beliefs are more or less likely (in a probabilistic way) to be accurate depictions of reality, we can harken back to a phenomenological approach in order to analyze if the grounds for such claims are truly present in our experience, our experience being the formal dictator of all logical and necessary truths, through which we must thoroughly seek to remove any falsehood from, and actively seek to better inform the beliefs which underlie the modes of consciousness which direct our life the most. Due to the inherent belief structure which is actively present in our actions, thoughts, Being, and which work to manifest our subjective experience, and thus our wellbeing, we are wise to examine that the beliefs from which our behavior and thus our mental state arises from, are wholly in tune with reality in a way that is logically explainable to us, without which we run the risk of being prey to false notions of belief, and thus less than optimal experience and manifestation of a truth expressing character. As belief plays an optimal role in the formations of the path of our lives, and our experience is limited by the time in which we are alive on this path, we would be remiss to not work to form a foundation of belief which is on firm ground, at least, insofar as we are philosopher, and lovers of truth.
What is the best way to which discover our doxic (intellectually discoverable belief) structure and its validity in corresponding to the reality which we find ourselves in? (Value Structure Instantiation) Through a phenomenological analysis, and later through a psychological examination, and lastly, through usefulness, beneficiality, and accurate truth-representing in everyday life situations. Through differentiations in input (of belief), and output (psychological state), together with real, meaningful results (real life application and usefulness), we can determine which beliefs we desire to contain, desire being used in a way to describe which we would most like to contain. Of course it is impossible to consciously believe in something we do not bodily believe in, analysis into the validity of our beliefs will necessarily close us off from this possibility, to the ability that we as human Beings, are able to accurately conceptualize the truth, and the proximity we have to it will be in direct proportion to our environmental factors, experience, and knowledge. The production of this process would be the foundation derived through wisdom, in the production of wisdom, which can be used to guide our behavior in life, and therefore affect others, and thus produce a system I have described elsewhere as “wisdom ethics”. The component of wisdom ethics thus described in this portion of writing is upon the foundational belief structure, and the phenomenological analysis used to uncover it, which would give rise to the most optimal wisdom schemata, if we wish for the implications of our ethical conduct to be grounded upon the truth, to the best of our ability in uncovering it.
In reference to our subjective experience of the content of the present moment perception available to us through mindfulness, we can discover that the content presented to us is of an essential axiomatic character (Mindfulness and Phenomenology). The axioms which we predominately wish to analyze here are those in which the Buddha claimed as fundamental and all applicable, in which we will alter slightly in their defining and expounding. The essences in question are those of desire and dissatisfaction with the present.
We find in our subjective experience our consciousness is directed towards objects of desire, whether these be in the form of mental or material content or physical acquisition or pursuit is indifferent to us here (abstract connections and the broad use of desire will be used throughout). Our consciousness is meaningfully directed towards the acquisition of its object of representation, one discoverable essence of this intentionality itself (not of the object of intention, but towards the very phenomena which is represented by the concept of intentionality or directedness) is its characteristic of desire. This desire is attempting to acquire something, which we experience as the object of attention. The essential nature of conscious direction with its foundation in desire necessarily implies that we do not currently posses the object of attention, placing us in a mode of deficiency. Coupled with the admission that we are in a constant state of directedness, which of course is transiently altered moment to moment, yet is founded upon an inherent desire which implies deficiency or lack, places a descriptive state of suffering, or unsatisfactoriness, as part of the normal state of being.
This all-experientially-pervasive aspect of Being in its totality, of unsatisfactoriness, drives our conscious experience both mentally and physically through life, and I believe is the natural product of evolutionary biology which truly seeks to work within the framework produced by evolution, towards the beneficiality of the genome (its survival, replication, copying fidelity). In recognizing dhukkha as being the first noble truth of life, in its essential nature being desire (contains desire to avoid, desire for change, desire for stability, in short, craving as well as clinging as well as aversion), the Buddha made the logical conclusion that if we wish to escape the dissatisfaction or suffering which characterizes our experience, which is discoverable by inflection and phenomenological analysis, we would have to eradicate desire. His conclusion on how to attain this is through following the noble eightfold path, which if carried out conclusively in perfect accordance with “the truth”, would lead to the dissolution of desire, which as being a fundamental underlying axiom supporting intentionality, would in turn eradicate suffering from our experience.
The problem is that in actuality, being biological beings, these terms are concrete and inherent in the very Being in which we are. Fortunately, we can recognize this nature, and find ways to realize the actuality of the first and second noble truths as being applicable as modes of the description of our Being, and based off the realization of such truths, work to navigate and become comfortable within the framework which we discovered to be underlying our existence. The framework of areas in which we could direct our intention to defining, and thus pursuing and through pursuit improving, is provided by the Buddha in his eightfold path… what each fold means, and the values inherent in them, are characterized through conceptualizations produced by us (or found in the conceptualization of values such as given by the Buddha, or philosophers, or other religions, etc. ) which in their defining and actualizing in a practical sense in our own experience can serve to a better or worse degree in improving our conscious apprehension of reality, as well as improving our wellbeing, and the wellbeing of those around us, in ways that are in alignment with our aforementioned value structure (Value Structure Instantiation). This understanding, pursuing and actualizing necessarily must include interactions with other Beings, as we discover them in our experience and thus they become part of the world which we wish to contend with, in recognizing the experientiality inherent in other beings, and possibility of better and worse states of being in in their experience, we are better enticed to follow better and worse moral structures in which to interact with the world, and thus to affect others.
In describing the framework of desire, if we wish to eradicate desire this itself becomes a second level of desire, if viewed from a phenomenological lens. E.g. in experience we may find ourselves contemplating the future, and our desire to have our present be in accordance with such imaginings. This produces an unsatisfactoriness experienced in the present, the result of desire. Thus we can hypothetically choose to follow the Buddha and seek to eradicate the desire, and thus we enter into the second dimension of desire in relation to the original object of desire (the actualization of a certain perception of the future.) In reference to this object we originally desired for its actualization in the first dimension, in the second dimension we desire to not desire this actualization or perhaps we simply desire to not attain that future perception. In any case, we are left wanting. The common Buddhist retort to the “problem of desiring to not desire” is that once we attain the object of our desire the desiring itself ceases. If we desire to go to the park, once we get to the park we no longer will desire to go to the park. If we desire to no longer desire, once we no longer desire, we will no longer desire. The only recognition that such a state of non-desire exists is a faith based claim upon the supernatural claim of Buddha’s attainment to it, which, if we analyze our experience, or anyone else that has ever lived, we can surely recognize the fallibility of such a claim. While it may be useful and beneficial to hold such a faith based belief structure, that path is wholly not the topic of our inquiry, as we seek to discover means of coping with our own experience, based on a phenomenologically sound base (as we so find in our experience, which is the limit to what we have to work with).The problem is that we cannot ever reach that place of nonexistent desire, and that desire itself is essential to the structure of our biological being and constitutes the very essence of our conscious experience, whether we like it, or believe it, or realize it, or not. I understand my own belief, finding, and perspective being here interjected, and wish to state that I believe my own belief itself to be fallible, and alterable, upon further evidence, which hitherto hasn’t presented itself to me, but altogether is unimportant to our pursuit of how to cope with the situations of a world we are currently “thrown” (Hiedeggerian) into.
By adding layers of desire in our quest to eradicate desire, we unknowingly are following the desire structure inherent in us. By seeking abstinence in response to overindulgence, we are merely trading one mode of Being for another, one set of actions for another, albeit perhaps with good intentions and good results, yet we are not escaping the desire structure. This isn’t a hopeless situation we find ourselves in, it isn’t good or bad, it merely is, and recognition of it can aide us in our conscious formulations of how to navigate through it.
Better or worse solutions are discoverable in response to navigating through the strata of suffering, intentionality, and desire. These can be improved by analyzing and expounding the eightfold path, or for better or worse through any other structuring of our Being we wish to view through. All methods of dealing with our current state of Being within the present moment are predicated on our acquired wisdom. The wiser we are, the better we handle the slings and arrows of misfortune, wisdom is the essential characteristic which represents our ability to traverse the landscape of life, and the noble eightfold path, as a method, is something we can utilize in the developing and implementing of wisdom. (Wisdom Ethics)
Nous – means mind, or Jungian psyche, so it is the general base for our subjective experiencing, which contains different components which themselves can be conceptualized and represented by different words, in reference to the totality of the psyche, or the nous.
Noema – is the thought, or mental content as experienced, the perceived object as it is meant by the subjective actor, what is intended through the act of thinking/perceiving/judging, the subjectively experienced moment that is perceived
Noemata – different perspectives or moments of perception relating to a single conceptual object, the characteristics which define the noema
Noesis – denoting a part of the mind such as one of the acts of mental experience, the mode of being which is background to the presentation of the noema in experience, that which is the active abstract mode manifesting content
Noetic content – content directly relating to the mental act itself, the noesis, as object, in its processing, such as the characteristics of the act of thinking, perceiving, judging, it is the description of traits which are embodied in the noesis
The thought itself, as we experience it, and its attributes and characteristics presented to us subjectively, as in the object thought about, and what is meant by it (the intention of intentionality) would be the noema. This noema is experienced momentarily, as what we perceive in the moment of thinking as being the object of thought would be depicted as the noema, a collection of various perceptions directed at the self-same object of perception or thought, the collection of norms in their unity as depicting an object, would collectively be called the neomata, or the description and characteristics of the momentary experience itself. This I describe as the neomata or the noematic content. If we were to have thoughts arising, the process of being which is “thinking” – being – the conceptual explanation part of the mind, would be a noesis, which contains an underlying essence which describes it in itself, the noetic content, what is that content we use to describe the act of thinking itself.
As an example, if we take the subjective experience of imagining a unicorn in our head. That image we get, and the conceptualization which corresponds to it in a subsequent moment of “thought”, and the meaning given by such conceptual symbolization in another moment, would be different noemas. The perspective which we inhabit and experience in the present moment is the content of the noema. All these different moments of being, experientially, which relate to the object of thought (the unicorn) are different noema, the way in which they all relate to the object, in the abstract intentionality and the characteristics of it, would be denoted as neomata. The noesis would the act of imagining as it is itself, giving rise to such an experience. That mode of being in which the noema occurs, that which is background and presupposed by the subjective experience, is the noesis. The noetic content would be the components which make up the noesis, or what constitutes imagining, such as doubting, mental imagery, belief, intentionality (directedness of though towards an object), all this content is underlying the act of noesis, of imagination, which in its subjective experience is shown in different ways, one of which would be the experience of imagining a unicorn, in its describing, picturing, doubting, questioning validity, judging, etc.
There is room for a phenomenological examination into the presence of enantiodromia, in reference to the Jungian and Neumann’s determination of the concept, and their theories upon it having a natural psychological function occurring as a real phenomena in our lives. There have been many expositions and uses of the terms in both of their works, but as to a centralized focus on the topic none exists that I’m aware of in outside philosophical treatises or in the phenomenological domain. Neither psychologist has expounded the basis for which it arises, that being upon the inherent essence of our psyche (producing both the conscious and the unconscious) to manifest the effects of enantiodromia, an analysis which undoubtedly must be carried out using a phenomenological method.
As we are beings who find ourselves “thrown” (Hiedeggerian) into a world unasked for, we necessarily encounter chaos within our experience as that which is counteractive to our ideal state of things. We find situations with limitless factors necessarily out of our control, experiences, emotions, thoughts, constantly arising and enabling us to have a potential range of options from which to decide upon manifesting in response to the present moments variants, this is the chaotic world of our subjective experience. As biological entities, the world does not present itself to us in a way which aligns with our natural goals, not to mention the more obvious examples within our experience such as our culturally informed societal goals, and developed desires. We find our consciousness constituted by a sense of consistent “directedness” (Husserl) towards objects and activities which follow from another aspect of our being, that of “desire; craving” (Buddhism), “will” (Schopenhauer), “will to power” (Nietzsche), and in general, “wanting”. This directedness of our essential Being in the pursuit of desire found within a transient world which is in its nature impermanent, conditioned, and chaotic, produces states of Being which are unique to that which we find in Dasein (humans for which their own being can become an issue for it-Heidegger). In this struggle to satisfy the directed nature of Being towards its specific desirous goals both unconsciously and consciously, we see an ever persistent attempt to wrestle with anxiety towards death and towards attainment of desire through managing the essential state of the world we find ourselves in, through imposing order upon chaos. This order manifests itself in the way we structure our being in opposition with the world in a way which optimizes our psychological experience within the present moment, according to the acquired knowledge (wisdom) which determines the degree of manageability we are able navigate situational content with.
In the learning process (wisdom acquisition) of the sentient Being, one finds oneself over correcting for the faults of inefficient ordering, this over-correcting, both in our attempts to order the chaos, as well as to avoid stagnation through manifesting change in our structure to combat rigidity (instigating chaos), is what has been described as enantiodromia in the psychological literature of Jung and Neumman.
Through our individual challenge of psychological management, we find ourselves on either side of a perfect harmony between a chaotic state of Being and an Orderly state of Being, or balance, which, if discovered, could end the pendulum swinging in any drastic fashion. Thus we unconsciously are coordinating our behaviors in response to our psychic state, which is determined through environmental and experiential stimuli to produce the current state of things as we experience them in the present. That being said, when our psyches are predominantly characterized by the presence of a dominant archetype, we tend to seek psychological resolve through the antithetical archetype. This process of dominant archetypes in an unstable psyche is eventually resolved through Jung’s conceptualization of individualization, which does not suppress the archetypes or have a dominant characteristic, but rather seeks to integrate them into a wholesome individual who recognizes their influence yet is able to be in control of the management of them so as to not be off balanced in regards to their effect over the individuals wellbeing. Thus we establishes ourselves as an individualized being, through the “discovery” and ordering of the subconscious’ contents into the awareness of consciousness, and integration of the two fields of the psyche into the totality of our Being. When our lives are characterized by a dominance of unconscious activity, we seek to impose our “will” upon our own structure, (a top-down control upon bottom-up dominance – neurologically speaking) the rectifying of such instability can be accomplished through what Neumann referred to as centroversion.
By consciously recognizing the unconscious’ power over our psyche, and recognizing the place and limits of both systems as being mere aspects of our integral whole, we begin to view the system which is our Being more holistically. A holistic view of our nature gives us the necessary knowledge to delve into the phenomenological analysis of the structure of this Being as it enables the manifestation of these multiple modes of Being. When able to retrospectively analyze “important” (more valuable/ memorable/ defining) areas of our past experience into certain generally definable temporal periods, we find them able to be classified as epochs in the development of our current Being. These psychical epochs are found as significant time spans which we are able to discover to contain indubitably essential information towards determining the next epochs essentially defining characteristics. When we analyze the general scheme of transference from one epoch in our lives development to the next, we can find the pendulum of enantiodromia present in its swing from the chaotic to the orderly, from the conscientiously depicted “good” to the “bad”, as we morally conceive of the terms conscientiously within each epoch, and vice versa, transforming our Being from one epoch to the next. It becomes present that patterns of psychological shifting have been taking place, as systems of knowledge and action are consistently being transcended by a new replacement ideology which contains within it the experiences of the past, yet purports to offer a new solution as a framework or mode of Being to oppose the state of thrownness which we then find ourselves in. As the defining of strata of conscience corrects for its misgivings in the “good” and the “bad”, progression is made towards a new system which is created through a dialectical progression as each epoch ends and contains new information as to its failures and changes it judges to be conducive to a better future state. In this process we find the development of wisdom through experience, as well as the gravitating of the pendulum towards a balanced neutral position. Thus the ancient adages such as “everything in moderation” as you get older you tend to “settle down”, settle down where? Settle down from jumping to extremities in the pursuit of a form of being which is well equipped to handle the slings and arrows of misfortune in existence.
How is a phenomenological realization of the enantiodromia which is a part of the structure we find to be the essence of our Being, useful to us who are able to conceptualize and realize the validity of it within our own lives? We can, containing as we do, detectable and contemplative modes of consciousness (available consciously to us, yet through deterministic means), contemplate our current position in reference to the optimal balancing place (being in reference to the pendulums center), which would mean an optimal life situated in the future which we would naturally fall past the in the swing of the pendulum, and work to unnaturally strive for its attainment. Whereas the process is necessarily unconsciously regulated through the advance of a subconscious or even consciously directed corrections made within our past modes of being, or in past epochs (great changes), we can take a more informed stab upon the greatest possible directedness of consciousness when we are able to view the picture holistically, consciously, after a phenomenological analysis. We can recognize our position and where we need to go, and direct our consciousness in an informed way towards the attainment of such a position. In regards to the totality of our Being and whether we seek to attain this as a short term remedy to our current psychological state, depends on our current disposition. If the desire so arises experientially to pursue centroversion consciously through diligent discipline consciously directed in its pursuits, which takes time and development (experience and knowledge), the choice is available to a broader and more precise extent to the phenomenologist who is able to determine his own position in reference to his own Beings location on the chaos/order spectrum, as well as the ability to consciously desire the pursuit of wisdom, and have the love of wisdom, which is philosophy, on his side.
While great persistent striving within a disciplined structure is often crucial to the attaining of goals, we must be wary lest we fall into psychological distress. We can consciously correct for this, without over-correcting, if we have the required wisdom to abstractly theorize about where the optimal psychological place lies, and subsequently to actively pursue these conscious goals in a practical way. In seeking to inhabit that space, we give attention to the Being which gives rise to both goal attainment and pursuit, as well as internal conscious wellbeing and psychological stability. I’m in no way saying that all-in pursuit of what is meaningful won’t produce psychological distress, but in the case in which our psychological wellbeing is hindered through our desires in our ordering of life too rigidly, we must enact wisdom to be able to navigate both aspects of the coin, the pursuit of our goals and what is meaningful, as well as what is psychologically beneficial to us. In no case should we over-correct to complacency, but with time and experience we can gain the insight and wisdom into how to circumvent these problems psychologically, as well as how to better direct ourselves to the optimal path that includes both important factors of our life (psychological state of Being and meaning-pursuing) which necessarily go hand in hand.
While I am aware this is nothing more than a basic structure into the practical outcome of phenomenologically analysis of enantiodromia, I hope it provides the necessary starting point and content that enables further inquiry.
Seek Truth 