By Leland M. Johnston, M.D.
Introduction
Chapters
1: Living What Cannot Be Represented
2: Sensory Function and Natural Selection
3: Mentalization of Self and Object
4: Process of Self Differentiated from Fixation on Self as an Entity
5: Survival and Well-Being Through Interconnection
6: Living Individuation and Interconnection
7: Process of Self Choosing Emotional Health
8: Emotional Health Is a Dynamic Process
9: Awareness and Attention
10: Learning To Live the Process of Self Each Moment
Glossary
Suggested Reading
Invitation for Discussion
Introduction
Years of training, clinical practice, and teaching offer opportunities to interact and learn with patients. These individuals serve as both the resource and inspiration for this essay, which is not about illness but about emotional health. Although the adage of being able to work and play has long been a common way to reference health, the perspective that follows in this essay — Learning To Live What Cannot Be Represented — offers a further reference of emotional health and well-being.
Current developmental and clinical research provides insight into how self functions as a process in survival and well-being. This essay is not intent on proof. Proof would require further research to substantiate what each of us can know about using the process of self through everyday experience. The following pages will provide further distinction to this perspective.
The brevity of the essay runs the risk of being too condensed for easy reading. The reduced length is to encourage an initial reading in order to facilitate discussion and understanding. An invitation for your comments and discussion is at the conclusion of the essay.
1: Living What Cannot Be Represented
What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
—Quoted from Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science, 1958
Through any stretch of human imagination, the limits of our powers of observation, via all our senses, govern the extent to which we have any perception of actual reality. These limits include any tools created to expand the horizon of our senses, such as the electron microscope, the fMRI scanner, the Large Hadron Collider, or the James Webb Space Telescope. A further limit of our ability to know, remember, and use what we sense and perceive is our capacity to represent those observations. How we represent and remember what we observe guides what we further explore and further represent. As we make discoveries through science, we learn more of what we continue to seek to know and represent.
The brain coordinates the neurobiology of experiencing life by coding our sensory experiences and perceptions into memory. This process occurs so rapidly that the observations weave seamlessly together as our reality. Upon further study, we understand that this reality is a construct of the limits of what we can experience through our senses and perceptions, and by what we can code into neuronal pathways of instinctual or reflex memory and representational memory. Representational memory includes language, image, science, philosophy, spirituality, mathematics, art, emotional representation, and all that we perceive, represent, and express through human experience. We represent what we learn through living life.
Although we use language to represent awareness, we all experience simply being aware without any specifics of representation. Awareness cannot be represented by time or space, yet is ever present — both consciously and unconsciously. Living through awareness, the human brain codes each sensory and perceptual interaction into memory to inform choice. This is indispensable to human survival. Choices guide the very essence of our living and our adaptation in survival as individuals and as a species. We learn to live what we cannot represent through awareness of what we sense, perceive, remember and choose regarding survival and well-being in each moment.,
2: Sensory Function and Natural Selection
As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.
—Quoted from Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1872
Sensory reflexes and their neurobiological memory are as fundamental to living as acting upon sensory reflexes of attraction and aversion is for monocellular organisms. These sensory reflexes evolve through interaction with food, procreation, danger, and other elements of the environment determining survival. The success or failure of each of these interactions codes into pathways of memory. Sensory systems of each living species function constantly and evolve over extensive periods of time, with an incredible diversity of genetic adaptations through natural selection via procreation. Research, dating back to the 1940s, began to highlight the epigenetic process of regulating gene expression to adapt during a lifetime in many forms of life.
Sensory pathways utilize memory to engage reflexively. In many species, senses can collaborate with other sensory pathways. Research in humans reveals the immense collaboration that can exist unconsciously among the various senses. This collaboration establishes a comprehensive rendering of sensory experience and the associated reflexive response to it. This occurs so quickly without our complete understanding of the complexity of the neurobiological process.
The neurobiological process of self, to direct ever-present awareness as attention on networks of memory, is the conscious process we use to make choices. An understanding of the process of self does not require qualifications about whether, or to what extent, awareness is derivative of neurobiology or is universal. The process of self directs awareness to choose our adaptation to and with both the environment and each other, determining our survival and well-being as individuals and as a species.
Fossil records of Cyanobacteria date as far back as 2.7 billion years. Jellyfish appeared about 505 million years ago. In comparison, our first human ancestors appeared only between 5 and 7 million years ago. Portraying human evolution as the crown of adaptation in the survival of any species can ignore the risk that the survival of our human species may be extremely brief and responsible for the demise of many other species and of our environment. Choice through attention to self as a fixed entity, rather than self as simply a process, risks the survival and well-being of each of us and of our human species, as well as the survival of other species and our environment.
3: Mentalization of Self and Object
Only Homo sapiens can cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers.
—Quoted from Yuval Noah Harari, TED Talk, 2015
Language as uttered sounds that communicate, emerged among various species long before the evolution of the human. Other species have the capacity of language to communicate, but the human species evolved a further extensive use of language throughout early child development to represent self and object in each experience. “Object” refers to whatever is the object of attention — be it a thought, a person, an event, an item in the environment, or any other point upon which attention focuses. As the parent uses language to represent each of these self-and-object interactions, the child remembers and learns these representations of self and object.
Representations of self and object gain particular utility in processing the living of life through emotion. In early human infancy, the parent empathically attunes to the child’s physiological experiences of attraction and aversion, and uses language to represent the living of these experiences as both cognitive and emotional representations. Emotions offer an expanded, more nuanced experience of living through attraction and aversion. This includes all emotions, such as greed, lust, happiness, anger, jealousy, shame, guilt, sadness, fear, hate, and love.
Research specifies this early developmental process as mentalization, which uses language, empathy, and play to represent innumerable self-and-object experiences, particularly those imbued with emotion. The human brain uses representations to remember the emotions that we live in each experience in order to guide future choices when negotiating adaptation.
Simultaneous with the process of mentalization, the child gains increasing capacity of the executive function pathways of the brain, involving the prefrontal cortex, to direct and hold attention. Memories of self-and-object representation gain increasing distinction and further differentiation throughout life.
This quote from a TED Talk in 2015 by Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, captures the immense evolutionary adaptation offered by the ability to use representations, which he describes as imagination:
“Only Homo sapiens can cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers … . Put 100,000 chimps in Wall Street or Yankee Stadium, and you’ll get chaos. Put 100,000 humans there, and you’ll get trade networks and sports contests … . Cooperation is not always nice, of course. All the terrible things humans have been doing throughout history are also the product of mass cooperation. Prisons, slaughterhouses and concentration camps are also systems of mass cooperation. Chimpanzees don’t have prisons, slaughterhouses or concentration camps … . Yet how come humans alone of all the animals are capable of cooperating flexibly in large numbers, be it in order to play, to trade or to slaughter? The answer is our imagination.”
During early childhood and throughout life, the representations of self and object are essential to the conscious process of making choices. The neurobiological process of the executive function pathways — those that direct awareness as attention and hold attention on representational memories of self and object in order to discern choice — develops increasing stability and constancy. The constancy is not of an entity of self. This is the constancy of the process of self choosing. Research describes this constancy as a developmental achievement that emerges as early as age three to four, but gains increasing utility throughout life. The experience of this constancy is ever-present as the process of self, with the same experience of the process of self now as at any earlier age.
The terms identity, self-esteem, and ego require distinction and differentiation from the process of self operating consciously in each choice. Although ego has an extensive history as a theoretical term of psychological function, its everyday usage is often synonymous with fixation upon self as an entity. Similarly, the expression that “someone takes something personally” refers to fixation upon self as an entity. Identity refers to the various traits, talents, and aptitudes of an individual or group. Identity has elements, often with genetic influences, that can develop and change over time. Identity is unique to a given individual or group of individuals. Self-esteem is very similar to identity. The healthy use of self-esteem refers to a confidence and trust in various talents or abilities that one develops. The maladaptive use of identity or self-esteem attributes value to an actual entity of self, as if the self of an individual has a fixed nature or worth. To differentiate, the process of self discerns conscious choice in each moment and can learn from the memory of maladaptive choices that are fixed on self and object as actual entities.
4: Process of Self Differentiated from Fixation on Self as an Entity
I will make the case that the experiences of being you, or of being me, emerge from the way the brain predicts and controls the internal state of the body. The essence of selfhood is neither a rational mind nor an immaterial soul. It is a deeply embodied biological process, a process that underpins the simple feeling of being alive that is the basis for all our experiences of self … . We do not perceive ourselves in order to know ourselves, we perceive ourselves in order to control ourselves.
—Quoted from Anil Seth, Being You, 2021
The human species is unique in using language to represent and remember the living of the vast array of emotions of self-and-object experience. As mentalization evolves in the human species, representations of emotion offer enhanced degrees of discernment of the specificity, quality, and intensity of interactions between self and object. Cognition further highlights emotional distinctions and offers communication with others. Sharing the predictive experience offered by memory of emotion and cognition provides the opportunity to choose and act in concert with others. This provides immense advantage in human survival.
The process of self coordinates conscious choice using sensory input, perceptual pathways, and direct emotional experience. Utilization of cognitive and emotional representation further distinguish any choice. The process of self then encodes the outcome of each choice into memory, which serves as scaffolding for further choice. Like the ever-ready response of all sensory and perceptual functions, the process of self is readily available to choose our adaptation for survival and well-being.
To think that a fixed entity of self chooses is a convenience, but it is just as mistaken as the convenience of thinking that the nose smells, the tongue tastes, the ear hears, the eye sees, or the skin touches. In addition to these commonly referenced five senses, we have many more senses and perceptual functions, operating continuously — such as balance, temperature, internal pain, vibration, proprioception, kinesthesia, chemoreception, hunger, and thirst. The neuronal signal from each sensory receptor or perceptual process functions through extensive neurobiological processing in the brain.
Sensory experience evolves to reflexively respond unconsciously, without any distinction of a conscious process of self to direct awareness as attention with emotional discernment. Memory of experiences of prior reflexive action simply guides further reflexive action.
In January, 2025, researchers at the California Institute of Technology estimated that sensory systems gather and process information unconsciously at an astonishing rate of up to one billion bits per second. Estimates suggest that 95% or more of neurobiological processing in the brain occurs outside of conscious experience. Even though supercomputers operate at much higher speeds, the human brain functions with far greater energy efficiency — consuming just 20 watts of energy compared to the millions of watts required for super computers — and within a much smaller space: about 1.3 liters in volume, versus roughly 6,000 square feet for the most advanced supercomputers. Furthermore, the human brain integrates information through neuroplasticity, allowing it to rewire itself dynamically based on experiences and learning.
The brain processes any unconscious sensory experience into perception, which organizes and differentiates sensory signals into conscious experience. For example, sensory processing detects a sound unconsciously and may act upon it reflexively, whereas perception recognizes the sound consciously — such as recognizing it as music. Perception includes the conscious experience of the life of emotions.
The process of self continuously scans perception to consciously discern moments of choice and to coordinate decisions based upon memory of past experiences. Memory of past experience — whether memory of unconscious reflex or memory of choice made consciously with emotional discernment — resides unconsciously until the process of self directs awareness as attention to utilize memories to direct choice in a present circumstance.
Conscious neurobiological processing occurs at the speed of about 10 bits per second — far slower than unconscious processing. Conscious processing distills vast amounts of sensory data into manageable perceptual bits, including the life of emotions through the process of self. The conscious process of self directs awareness as attention to representational memories of emotional and cognitive experience to discern and predict optimal choices. Conversation that simply conveys information proceeds at a somewhat faster rate, approximately 39 bits per second.
The speed of neurobiological processing, both unconscious and conscious, instills the erroneous perception that self is an actual entity that considers choice and intends action. In everyday discourse, “self” is often referenced in this manner. However, choice fixed upon self as a fixed entity — rather than self as an ongoing neurobiological process — jeopardizes adaptation.
Our conscious use of the process of self is vital to the process of choices which we make governing adaptation and flexibility that is intrinsic to survival and well-being. In contrast, choices made through attention fixed on self as an entity, rather than through self as simply a process, have a detrimental impact on our emotional health, on our relationship to others, and on our relationship to the environment.
5: Survival and Well-Being Through Interconnection
Over the course of two weeks, you actually exchange out an equivalent to the entire body mass of your body … . Even the stuff that is seemingly more permanent, like the calcium in your bones, 98% of all of that cycles out within a year … . We are constantly in the state of inner becoming — with the whole earth. This is not theoretical. This is literally exactly what’s happening. Part of you was these plants a couple of days ago. Part of you tomorrow is going to be them … . And this is how much we are interconnected with our planet.
—Quoted from Tom Chi, How Everything Is Connected, TEDx/Taipei, January 2016
Research into the adaptations of all complex life forms — including animals, plants, fungi and microorganisms — confirms that cooperation is a common adaptation of survival. Cooperation even accounts for the initial emergence of one-celled organisms. Such cooperation expresses the interconnection that is considered a biological fact in ecological research, a native wisdom in many Indigenous traditions, and a truth or moral code in spiritual traditions.
Humans, as a social species, possess genetic capacities at birth for both individuation and social relatedness, which have evolved through generations of human survival and natural selection. Many outlines of early child development emphasize the process of individuation from attachment to the parent. Yet the development of regard for interconnection — with the parent and others — is integral to the healthy development of individuation. More recent developmental and neurobiological research on the social brain provides further insight into this interconnection. We humans adapt and survive as a social species through interconnection with each other and our environment. Both the choice of the individual to work and play and the choice to interconnect with each other and the environment are intrinsic to our emotional well-being. This is the human evolution of the process of self choosing individuation and interconnection.
Individuation and interconnection may seem to aim in distinctly different directions. Interconnection does not reference an emotional state of union; it refers to a process of our inherent reliance upon each other and the environment. Healthy individuation does not reference an emotional state of freedom from others; it refers to the continuous, ever-present process of curiosity, exploration, and innovation unique to each of us. As our process of self chooses, both individuation and interconnection are intrinsic and essential to human adaptation.
6: Living Individuation and Interconnection
When asked if there is a time to use violence or aggression, Marshall Rosenberg answered, “No to violence or aggression but yes to the protective use of force … . There is nothing we human beings like more than to contribute to one another’s well-being.”
—Quoted from Marshall Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Brief Introduction, YouTube, July 2010
The metaphor of a single calendar year representing the 4.4 billion years of our planet’s age helps us grasp the time interval of the evolution of our human species. The first life on earth appeared in mid-March. By June, the first cells with a nuclei carrying genetic information evolved. Multicellular organisms evolved by November. Human life appeared just thirty minutes before midnight on December 31.
Human evolution of using the process of self — specifically, using representations of self and object with emotional discernment in order to choose through memory and prediction — offers enormous survival advantages. Yet it carries the highly precarious risk of choice intent upon self as a fixed entity, without regard for cooperation and interconnection. This risk to each of us and to our species directly impacts our survival and well-being, but also the survival of others and the environment.
This quote from Nichola Raihani’s The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World helps us appreciate the precarious process of human choice:
“Within the last sixty seconds, humans have engineered both the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions, formed global nation states, waged two horrifying world wars, and presided over wholesale domination and destruction of the natural world.”
Our human species evolved — and continues to evolve — an invaluable advantage in survival and wellness through mentalization to choose through a vast repertoire of emotions using the process of self and object. Gains through evolution are frequently accompanied by escalated risks. The gain in evolution through mentalization risks extensive maladaptation and threats to survival through choices as if self and object are fixed entities.
Competition is inherent to survival and inspires determined, persistent, and passionate effort as we live both individuation and interconnection. The intent to fix upon a self as an entity that gains a win or suffers a loss interferes with an individual’s best effort. We learn from one another’s mistakes and achievements without fixation upon an entity of self as a failure or as a success.
Human law justifies the protective use of force in self-defense. Our survival as a species — and the evolution of our health and well-being — rely upon choices made through negotiation without violence. In interpersonal dialogue, particularly in resolving conflict, two fundamental tools facilitate discernment and express respect for both our individuality and our interconnection. The first tool is a thorough discovery of one another’s point of view, primarily through observations and questions. The second is genuine empathy for the emotions pertinent to each other’s perspective. This becomes the ground for communication about choice and for strategies to realize choice. This listening — through questions and empathy — is essential to healthy interpersonal communication in which agreement can emerge naturally over time, or even more immediately, and disagreements can become clearer. Seeking advantage when fixed upon oneself or another as an entity jeopardizes healthy communication. Successful communication relies upon honesty and on the process of self to discern differences and express respect for both our individuality and our interconnection, rather than regressing into aggressive violations of one another.
This description of choosing both individuality and interconnection may read like a portrayal of an ideal. In fact, it describes a process lived through each choice that determines the adaptation of our survival and our well-being. Each of us can realize, in any moment, that every other human uses the process of self to make choices to survive and adapt. Empathy for one another arises naturally from this realization.
7: Process of Self Choosing Emotional Health
The interface theory of perception claims that evolution shaped our senses to be a user interface, tailored to the needs of our species. Our interface hides objective reality and guides adaptive behavior in our niche.
—Quoted from Donald Hoffman, The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes, 2019
Life is lived through the continuous process of unconscious reflex using sensory memory, and through the conscious process of self choosing through coordination with our perceptions, our direct emotional experience, and our memory of representations of our past emotional and cognitive experience. The health of our choices toward any endeavor can express the energy and creativity of an individual while attending to our interconnection with each other and the environment. This includes choices in science, business, sports, art, engineering, sales, medicine, or any other endeavor. We experience emotional health as our process of self chooses to engage work, play, or rest within our shared interconnection, without fixation on an entity of self or object.
The health of the process of self relies on discernment in each choice of the degree to which any emotion or thought fixes on self as an entity. In everyday activity, the use of reminders helps release any degree of fixation upon oneself or other as an entity and facilitates a return to the process of self simply directing awareness as attention to choice without fixation. Each of us can express unique talents and ambitions and use helpful reminders such as gratitude, forgiveness, humor, respect, kindness, generosity, humility, empathy, and compassion in our choices. Any of these reminders can carry nuances of the others which can all naturally resonate. Each provides a healthy perspective as the process of self chooses our endeavors and our relationships without fixation on self as an entity.
Recognizing the deleterious effects of attending to self as a fixed entity is a perspective learned through repeated failure, much like learning to walk. Each moment of living — each moment as in ‘now’ — offers a learning opportunity. Although ideals can guide our choices like a map, it is living the effects of any choice that teaches survival and wellness. The most thorough learning occurs through the suffering experienced, either immediately or eventually, when the process of self chooses as if self is a fixed entity. Healthy human development learns to release any attention directed to self as a fixed entity. Each successful choice of both individuality and interconnection can further confirm the learning to choose both in survival and wellness. This learning is a process each engages individually throughout a lifetime. The life of any choice can extend interpersonally and affect the well-being of both the individual and the other.
Forgiveness is vital to the health of learning the process of self choosing. Forgiveness involves a full acknowledgment, to both oneself and another, of any fixation upon self as an entity that impacts either oneself or another. Each of us can potentially learn from each mistake and from each other in each moment.
In certain moments of emergency requiring instant, unconscious response, instinct or reflex governs survival. In such moments, there may be no opportunity for conscious choice through directing awareness as attention to representations of self and object. After those moments, however, reviewing memories of emotion and thought relevant to the previous experience provides an opportunity for discernment that is indispensable to similar choices in future moments.
8: Emotional Health Is a Dynamic Process
This is what affects [emotions] are for: they convey which biological things are going well or badly for us, and they arouse us to do something about them … . This brings us full circle, back to the most fundamental feature of affect: its valence. You decide what to do and what not to do on the basis of the felt consequences of your actions. This is the Law of Affect. Voluntary behaviour, guided by affect, thereby bestows an enormous adaptive advantage over involuntary behaviour: it liberates us from the shackles of automaticity and enables us to survive in unpredicted situations.
—Quoted from Mark Solms, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness, 2021
To reiterate, we choose consciously through networks of self and object memories coded with emotions that we live. Our memories of interactions — processed intrapsychically within ourselves, interpersonally with each other, and interactively with the environment — offer opportunities of choice predicated on these memories. The process of self directs awareness, as attention, to these networks of memory to discern choice, to live each choice, and to record the outcome lived in each choice. We employ the process of self in making innumerable choices each day determining adaptation. Emotional health is a continual, dynamic process — not passive or fixed — whereby the process of self uses cognition and emotion to choose survival and well-being for each of us.
Emotions mark our experience of living and offer the ground upon which choices are made. We use cognitive representations of emotions to make choices, but the actual living of our emotions determines the process of our survival and wellness. Emotions are neither bad nor good. For example, anger can be highly adaptive in the experience of mistreatment or abuse. The issue concerns what is the most adaptive way to process and express the anger. On the other hand, anger driven by intent upon a fixed entity of self is entirely maladaptive for all concerned.
The use of the emotional words such as love or happiness as primal motives for living is inspirational, as they capture much of the essence of our experience. The urge to seek love or happiness is very natural. Attempts to represent interconnection through the emotion of love between self and object can idealize love as a state to seek. Love, like all emotions expressing the experience of self living in interaction with object, has many variations of expression and meaning. For example, these variations range from any maladaptive craving of love fixed on an object with relentless insistence or coercion, to a more adaptive use such as deep caring for an object without fixation.
For purposes of representing the full dynamics of survival and adaptation, emotions are vital in guiding choice. Emotion fixed in an emotional state to a fixed entity of self risks loss of flexibility and adaptation. Attention fixed on self as an entity in any emotional state, including states of love or happiness, can obscure or neglect the release to the process of self simply choosing without intent to attach to an emotional state. What determines the value of any emotion in survival and wellness is whether the emotion lives in a healthy, resilient choice encompassing both individuality and interconnection, or in a deterioration of health and adaptation when fixed on self as an entity.
The current predominance of the human species emerged through evolution. A prominent feature of this evolution is the mentalization of self and object during prolonged infancy and toddlerhood. Mentalization refers to the development of the process of self using both cognition and an extensive repertoire of emotional representation to choose. On the surface, it may seem straightforward to remember self as a process and to release any tendency to fix upon self as an entity. However, the mentalization of self and object challenges the learning of self as a process — very specifically distinct from self as a fixed entity. In fact, remembering this perspective presents a persistent challenge. All of us, even from the most favorable of past emotional development or in the most optimal of current circumstance, are vulnerable to varying degrees of maladaptive fixation of emotion onto self as an entity. These fixations may be triggered in varying degrees at different points in time. The most persistent fixations onto self as an entity are intense states of internal emotional conflict or trauma. These fixations may be triggered in varying degrees at varying points in time. Intense fixations can even lead to the wish to suicide. The extent to which we release such fixations, with a return to a process of self simply choosing both individuation and interconnection expresses the degree of flexibility and adaptation intrinsic to our emotional health.
Illnesses — including traumas and accidents — emerge over the span of life from birth to death, beyond determinants of choice. These include illnesses of every sort, such as infectious, metabolic, psychiatric, congenital, autoimmune, carcinogenic, traumatic, iatrogenic, or cardiovascular illnesses. Adaptation in recovery, or in living with the illness or pain, can involve intense emotional moments. The vulnerability to fixate on self as an entity can increase during debilitating illness or trauma accompanied by overwhelming emotions. In such states, the process of self can learn to release from intense fixation on self as an entity. Reminders to release to ever-present awareness and to choose the emotional health of living both individuality and interconnection are essential.
9: Awareness and Attention
Being aware of being aware is not a focusing of our attention on something. It is more like a relaxation of our attention, a falling back of attention into its source — to rest in and as the aware being that we inherently are. — Quoted from Rupert Spira, 2021
Awareness deserves much further distinction to understand directing awareness as attention and to further clarify the process of self. Awareness cannot be represented through the duality of self and object inherent to language. Awareness is always present without qualifications of space, time, action, thought, fantasy, emotion, or any other conceptual reference. Our process of self is indispensable in directing awareness as conscious attention to choose moments of living — whether we realize it or not.
An analogy for our process of self is a prism separates white light — as a metaphor for awareness — into its constituent spectrum of colors. White light in this analogy is the continuous ever-present awareness we live but cannot represent. The prism is the conscious life of direct perceptual and emotional experience, and the process of self choosing through both cognitive representation and emotional representation. Choices of both individuality and interconnection are intrinsic to human adaptation and live in the expression of the colors. Any fixation onto self as an entity blocks the full spectrum of colors that are essential to healthy choices we make to live life.
References to selflessness — which are references to no fixation upon self as an entity — accompany descriptions of altered states such as kundalini experiences, hallucinogenic states, out-of-body experiences, flow states, or blissful states. Accounts of these states are inspirational and are the subject of ongoing research, both scientific and contemplative. Altered states have immense appeal. In spiritual traditions, the term “dark night of the soul” refers to the anguished states of emotion fixed to self as an entity and may even herald moments of epiphany accompanying the release of that fixation.
By definition, the experiences of any state — including altered states — occur in intervals of time. Being aware is not a state to achieve but is present in our every moment of living. Any attempt to achieve a degree of fixation on self as an entity in any of these states risks a loss of perspective regarding the indispensable use of our process of self to choose our survival, adaptability, and emotional well-being in each moment.
Cognitive and emotional representations of self and object are intrinsic to our survival. Representations can only reference or guide like a map but cannot actually live life. We live through all of our senses and perceptions, including the life of our emotional experiences, and through the process of self choosing in regard to memory of prior experience. Representations offered by philosophy, spirituality, art, mathematics, and scientific research can serve as invaluable reminders of living the choices of both individuality and interconnection, and of releasing to simple awareness — but always at the risk of seeking any reminder as a fixed entity. This is particularly pertinent to spiritual representations, which offer inspirational reminders yet risk elaborating a fixed entity determined by human assignment.
Current theories of awareness as quantum field, of interconnection as quantum entanglement, and of memory as morphic resonance — functioning like a field beyond the neurobiology of the brain — remain subjects of much research. Yet, any such theory or proof still functions only as a representation. We live our survival and wellness through actually living each choice. As we live each choice, we represent the memory of the outcome of each choice. We can learn from these remembered representations to serve as a map to help guide further choices.
Differentiating cognitive and emotional representations — which function like a map — from the actual living of each choice is particularly pertinent to speculations about the potential of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence processes information through representations that function like a map, even with the potential of predictive relevance. The direct experience of attraction and aversion, including the direct experience of emotion as much more distinct differentiation of attraction and aversion, is the living of life — not a representation. Living life is living survival and wellness through unconscious reflex and through the conscious process of self choosing to live the adaptive experience of both individuation and interconnection.
Living the actual suffering — when the process of self makes a maladaptive choice to fix on self as an entity — offers the opportunity to learn. Living life can release from any self and object representation to be simple awareness. To state it emphatically: representations, including those of artificial intelligence, can guide through emotional and cognitive representations like a map but cannot live life through direct emotional experience, which includes learning through suffering and through release to peace of simple awareness without self and object representations.
10: Learning To Live the Process of Self Each Moment
Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.
—Quoted from Carl Sagan, 1995
The letting go of fixation upon self as an entity is instrumental to health. The full expression of health occurs through awareness and living our choices using the process of self in each moment. We live health and wellness as we learn to live our process of self — choosing both individuality and interconnection with each other and the environment — and as we learn to release self as a fixed entity. We repeatedly learn from each moment of choice, especially from the suffering when choosing self as a fixed entity. Belief is simply an intellectual position, which may or may not be useful. Wisdom develops through learning from living each experience.
Like the unfathomable speed of our senses and reflexive responses, the conscious process by which self directs awareness as attention can occur within indistinguishably brief fractions of a second. The process of self directs attention to one of the following four conscious processes, but can quickly shift from one to another — at times even frequently during an imperceptibly brief interval of time.
Engage: The process of self directs awareness as attention to choose and engage individuality and interconnection.
Fix upon self as an entity: The process of self directs awareness as attention to self as a fixed entity, with accompanying risk of maladaptive choices. This includes fixation upon memories of past trauma and emotional conflict.
Scan: The process of self continually scans. Scanning perceives potential choices. The drift of attention to fix upon self as an entity is highly susceptible during scanning.
Release: The process of self releases attention fixed upon self-and-object representations. Healthy release is to choice engaging both individuality and interconnection — or to simply being aware.
The directing of attention to self as a process or to self as a fixed entity is so predominant that the realization that one can release to simple awareness is initially a discovery. Being aware is ever-present in each of us. We do not become awareness. Our very being is awareness. Ever-present awareness has no self-and-object representation as in emotional or cognitive representations. Peace is the word most expressive to represent the experience of simple awareness when the process of self releases from any directing of attention to self-and-object representations.
Love, wonder, beauty, and joy are words that describe self-and-object interactions. Any use of emotional or cognitive language of self and object risks the creation of idealizations to seek — as if to become the emotional or cognitive experience of a fixed entity of self, now or in the future. Varying degrees of the experience of those words may emerge in the peace of being aware without engaging self and object as fixed entities. The vital distinction is that being aware and the peace of awareness are ever-present to which release is effortless.
The peace of simply being aware
lives always in all of us.
The process of self directs awareness
as attention to make choice.
Through sensory and perceptual experience,
and the memory of prior choice,
the process of self can learn to choose
the adaptability of both individuation and interconnection.
We can learn through the suffering of any intent
upon self and object as a fixed entity.
Forgiveness of self and any other is vital
to the full experience of this learning.
We can release any directing of awareness
to the peace of simply being aware.
Representations function as reminders in learning to live what cannot be represented. Each individual lives in the moment of sensory, perceptual, and actual emotional experience. The representations of emotion and cognition, elaborated in the memory of the outcome of each choice, provide the opportunity to learn concerning future choices. Furthermore, representations offer the opportunity to communicate with others in learning to live both individuation and interconnection.
Choosing uses reminders so essential in remembering to differentiate maladaptive choices — fixed on self and object as entities — from adaptive choices living self as process. Describing health in this way expresses the prevention or avoidance of any maladaptive fixation on self and object. The full living of health discerns the vitality of living the uniqueness of each individual through the process of self choosing both individuality and interconnection. This not only expresses health but generates health and well-being.
Previously mentioned reminders of individuation and interconnection — such as gratitude,, forgiveness, humor, respect, kindness, generosity, humility, empathy and compassion — are invaluable when learning to express our individual talents and ambitions. People, past or present, who exemplify these reminders are inspirational. The reminders that we use to successfully guide our choices determine memories of our adaptations in survival and wellness.
The risk of using any reminder is the human inclination to seek any reminder as a fixed entity, with representations determined by human assignment. Spirituality is a profound source of inspiration when engaged as reminder rather than as any fixation on an entity elaborated by human representation. For example, Buddhist teachings emphasize reminders that self is a dynamic process rather than a fixed entity. The biblical phrase “God is love” expresses a vivid reminder that our very being is interconnected. The biblical passage in Philippians, “The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,” serves as an enduring reminder of the peace of simple awareness. Similarly, reminders of the ever-presence of awareness, without any fixation of self and object, are expressed in the biblical quote of God’s self-revelation to Moses in Exodus, “I am that I am,” and in Jesus’s affirmation in the Gospel of John, “Before Abraham was, I am.” These passages are ever-present reminders of self as a process rather than self as an entity seeking spiritual divinity as a fixed entity determined by human representation.
We learn to live what cannot be represented through the process of self choosing representations of both individuation and interconnection, with release from any fixation on self and object as entities. Release to the peace of awareness is ever-present. Whether one identifies as atheist, agnostic, spiritual, or religious, self as process chooses. Each choice offers learning that can deepen over time. To live life and generate the health of each moment, the process of self learns to live what cannot be represented.
Glossary
Attention: Attention is the directing of awareness.
Awareness: Awareness is ever present, both conscious and unconscious, without qualifications of time, space, or any other conceptual distinctions.
Consciousness: Brain function is preponderantly unconscious. Consciousness occurs with the directing of awareness.
Ego: Although ego has an extensive history as a theoretical term of psychological function, the everyday common usage of ego is synonymous with fixation upon self as an entity.
Emotion: In early human infancy, the parent empathically attunes to the child’s natural experiences of attraction and aversion, and uses language to represent the perception of these experiences as specific emotions. Emotions offer an expanded, more nuanced experience of living attraction and aversion.
Identity: Identity references the various capacities, talents, and attributes of an individual or group of individuals.
Individuality: Individuality refers to the continuous, ever-present process of one’s curiosity, exploration, and innovation.
Interconnection: Humans adapt and survive as a social species through interconnection with other humans and our environment. Interconnection refers to our inherent reliance upon each other and the environment.
Mentalization: Mentalization is the developmental process using language to mentally represent and record in memory innumerable self-and-object experiences, particularly those imbued with emotion.
Object: Object refers to whatever is the object of attention, be it a thought, a person, an event, an emotion, or an item in the environment.
Perception: Perception is the neurobiological process which organizes and differentiates sensory signals into conscious experience. Sensation is the unconscious process of detecting raw input of physical stimuli through sensory organs such as seeing, smelling. touching, tasting or hearing. Perception is the neurobiology of processing sensory stimuli into conscious experience. Perception includes the direct experience of the life of emotions.
Process of self: Through neurobiological collaboration with our senses, the process of self is the conscious process of directing attention on networks of memory to discern choice, and of recording in memory the outcome of self and object lived in each choice. We employ the process of self in making innumerable choices each day, thus determining adaptation.
Self: In order to define a process of self, it is essential to appreciate the speed of neurobiological processing. This speed instills the erroneous perception that self is an actual entity that considers choice and intends action. In everyday discourse, there is no issue with referring to self in this manner. The matter at issue is that adaptation is at risk to the degree that the process of self chooses as if self is a fixed entity.
Self-and-object constancy: The neurobiological process of the executive function pathways to hold attention on representational memories of self and object in order to discern choice develops increasing stability and constancy. This is the constancy of the process of self choosing. The constancy is not of a fixed entity of self. Research describes this constancy as a developmental achievement by age three to four that gains increasing utility throughout life.
Self-esteem: Self-esteem refers to the confidence and trust in various attributes or skills one uses and develops.
Sensory pathways: Sensory reflexes evlove through interaction with food, procreation, danger, and other elements of the environment determining survival. The success or failure of each of these interactions codes into neurobiological pathways of memory. Research reveals the immense potential of collaboration among the various senses. Reflexive action predicated upon prior sensory experience does not involve a conscious process, but is unconscious action born of memory of prior experience.
Suggested Reading
Harari, Yuval Noah (2015). Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. New York: Harper.
Hoffman, Donald (2019). The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
Raihani, Nichola (2021). The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Rosenberg, Marshall (2015). Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. Encinitas, CA: PuddleDancer Press.
Seth, Anil (2021). Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. New York: Dutton.
Solms, Mark (2021). The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
Spira, Rupert (2022). You Are the Happiness You Seek: Uncovering the Awareness of Being. Oakland, CA: Sahaja Publications.
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