Semantic Restructuring is the pursuit of enlightenment, enlivenment, empowerment through the creative re-arranging of the building blocks of meaning. For a better description, Start Here.
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Bateson, books, cogling, context, CPB, embodiment, framing, I Ching, paradox, perception influence, prisdem, semantic punctuation, sensation, techniques, unconscious
Sometimes we need to be told how to feel.
This may seem to violate precepts of authenticity and transparency as preached by some pop-psych movements, but the reality is you already feel much of what you feel because you've been told to feel that way. And sometimes the way you've been told to feel is wrong. Sometimes what we need is for someone to tell us it's ok to feel something else.
The thing people forget, or overlook, or simply don't realize is that most of what passes as natural, spontaneous, intuitive feelings is still programmed, patterned, learned. "I know it like the back of my hand," is short hand for "I don't think about it." "As intuitive as 2 + 2 = 4," is a way to say, "I've edited out my personal struggles to learn numbers, arithmetic; they were so long ago I don't count them any more." Even "alphabetical order" is so ingrained in us that most of us never question it. Think about it. What order is there in the alphabet as we know it? Not shape. Not sound. Not size. No, the order of the alphabet, that we take so intuitively for granted, is learned, taught, reinforced a thousand and one times.
So too for our feelings. We are taught and trained to feel good about shiny new things. We are taught and trained to want to be skinny young things. We are taught and trained to feel bad if we don't have shiny new things and can't be skinny young things. There is no inherent reason to feel that way. There have been times in history when skinny young things were considered sickly and shiny new things were considered dangerous, they were things to feel bad about. That was then, this is now, and the fact is these feelings are learned, ingrained, constantly reinforced from repitition and socializing factors. It isn't as simple as your pappa sitting you down on his knee and saying, "Hot young tail, that's what life's all about." Instead we soak up these injunctions about what is supposed to make us feel good and what is supposed to make us feel bad from a constant stream of informal examples and cues; jokes, movies, stories, love songs, all the aspects of the culture.
And so there you are, September 1, 2004, and you feel however you feel about things. And there is a pattern to that. Not a random pattern. An arbitrary one, an arbitrary pattern shaped by the intersection of your culture's values and your personal experiences. Not random. And not truly intuitive, but learned, accreted over time. And sometimes you might notice you don't like the way you feel. Sometimes you might notice that the arbitrarily accreted pattern of feeling responses you have today just doesn't serve you as well as you would like. That's when we need someone to tell us how to feel.
Of course, my telling you to feel good about your belly doesn't carry much weight against the culture screaming at you that if you don't have six-pack abs your are unfit to be seen. That message will get reinforced every time you turn on MTV or run the guantlet of magazine covers prominently posted at point of sale at your grocery store. You are subjected to thousands of messages a day, not only telling you what to buy, but why to buy, how to feel about not having what you would have if you bought. Buy this record, be cool. Buy this car, be rich. Buy this exercise machine, be fit. And feel good. Unless you can't buy it, then feel bad. So my simply telling you that you are a creature of light, a divine spark, part of a divine flame that is all creation, well, my saying it directly once or twice doesn't carry as much weight as the constant barrage of messages telling you that unless you are Brittany Spears or Brad Pitt then you're nothing and no one and should be happy to have your pathetic job and pittance wages and miserable life. Because repitition counts.
Well, since repitition counts, I'll say it again. As you are, changing not a thing, you are a divine construct of a divine will as part of a divine plan to create beauty and wonder. Is that a little heavy for you? Don't worry, it might or might not be any more true than the lies Cosmo and GQ tell you about who you are and how you should feel. Chances are you long ago swallowed the lies of Cosmo and GQ. If it comes down to my lie or theirs which will you choose?
Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Taoist systems of thought share a common element, instructions for living a better life. And while there may be conflict as to what defines a better life, there is another thing all these systems share: practical exercises for entraining your feelings. Call it prayer, meditation, manipulating prana, accessing the protective unconscious, rearranging the building blocks of meaning, no matter; there are overlaps between all these approaches that are of great value when the task is to entrain our feelings out of the arbitrary patterns of the moment into more enlightened, lively, powerful patterns. So when I say it might be a lie that you are a divine spark of a divine flame, well, it might also be true. You won't find final answers along those lines on this site. But you will find constant reminders that you can be better to yourself, kinder and firmer, sweeter and wiser. You will find a constant reminder to feel better, about yourself, your prospects, your essential being, the ways of the world. Because sometimes we need someone to tell us how to feel.
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