Experience
will produce some outcome, in the case of the External technique, the desire for knowledge. This outcome will sometimes be beneficial and sometimes be futile or cause problems and sometimes endanger one. The individual has to learn how to discern what experience to go with and what to avoid. This will involve a combination of rational thinking, guesswork and intuition. If one were shown a number of envelopes, each containing various amounts of money, and one were allowed to open one and keep the amount of cash contained therein, how would one decide which one to open. This could involve complete guesswork, or a logical process wherein one might try to guess the order in which the organizers would place them.
One might use intuition or some combination of all. Intuition is a facility that seemingly is able to foresee the future such that decisions based on intuition prove to be correct. It seems to involve no consciously logical processes. The intuitive product is likely to just pop into one's mind. And it seems to work best when the mind leaves space for it to show up, like a blank space on a computer screen.
Objectives tend to interfere with the proper working of intuition. An objective tends to mandate that there is a logical order of achievement. To get to the store one must first cross the street. The mind is conditioned to utilize this form of logical function for all tasks except those that are unconscious, from turning on the television to crossing the country. The logical processes of achieving objectives are automatic and have a history of success at accomplishing things. Thus, to accomplish by inaction, as to let things happen of their own accord, may be very difficult since the mind's logic wants to continuously promote the job. All processes such as intuition, that oneis unused to, are difficult and take practice. Practice is usually best on small and unimportant things.
Since it is conditioning that tends to control the individual in continuous patterns of behavior, and since much of conditioning is one's cultural environment, as local and national culture, a means of identifying this conditioning is to change the cultural geography. Completely foreign people do things in completely distinct ways. The individual may find that people in a strange culture think, talk, act and do things differently. They may find that they have a completely different view of life and its philosophy. By comparison, the individual can contrast the self with these differing perspectives and behavior, and in this way determine what and how one has been conditioned, as distinct from those in differing cultures. This process involves spending some time, as perhaps at least a year. It also involves an immersion into the culture and a suspension of one's own activities, and normal behavior, as carried with one from home, such that they allow time for observation, reflection, communication, experiential interaction and the pure experience of ambiance.
The activity of doing things the way they are done on foreign shores, as 'when in Rome do as the Romans do', can be the practice of distinguishing one's conditioning from that of others. On a similar track but not necessarily involving foreign cultures, is the incorporation of ambiance, as the natural and cultural place and location where one finds oneself. Often one might assume that the intellect and sensory capacities are mutually exclusive, the one involving reading, thinking and writing indoors by lamp light, while the other is sand, surf, hiking or mosquitoes. To engage the sensory sensations, feelings and emotions of one's environment, as the feeling of weather, the sensations of the seasons, the ambiance of architecture, marketplaces, historical sites, parks and gathering places, gives to all of one's experiential reality, an intellectual edge and excitement. Intellect by itself is one dimensional. The totality of living in the world, to include intellectual pursuits is more complete and multifaceted. One may combine thinking with walking, reading with sitting outdoors, fantasy with traveling, role playing while doing errands or observation with a philosophical context.
The emergence into ambiance could be defined as a complete and separate aspect of External Analysis, or what could be called pure experience. This may be pertinent when one reaches a point of intellectual saturation, a lack of progress, a sense of futility, a change of pace, or as an experiment with non-activity and non-intent, the practice of intuition, of letting things happen of their own accord, of passivity. One begins to relax into the moment and sit, watch, experience and relax. This may be difficult at first for those who are unused to it, but as one gets accustomed and becomes involved in the environmental ambiance that surrounds one. There may develop an appreciation of extreme beauty, magnificence, a majesty, a sense of exotica, such that after a time the person may feel that they have time for nothing else, except this appreciation of the moment. Of course one must have time for it or at least parttime. Another aspect of this inactivity is perhaps the acquirement of the ability to determine the difference between what are termed Emotion and Natural Affection.
Emotion is defined as an elevated sensory response to what is of consequence for the individual over and above the normal sensory response. And thus not much emotion would be evident for a person seated in a park or square in Europe somewhere. Natural Affection is sensory response of the individual, as a natural response of the sensory apparatus, without the association of consequence to elevate the reaction. If one becomes more appreciative of the simple present moment, enjoying it more and more, elevated states of sensory response, as in the case of emotional consequence, may develop as Natural Affection, wherein one may begin to attain heightened sensory response merely by the simple activity of sitting in a beautiful place. The immersion into ambiance is best done alone, because while with others, one's attention is always split between other people and present experience, without actually being quite with others, and quite in the moment. There is also always the pressure to do something, more or less seeming exciting.
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