In a conversation recently with my good friend Doctor Assad Meymandi I used a more au courante phrase to communicate about an experience, concept and belief I have spoken to him about and have been using for decades. This time he heard it and as we parted he said “today I have learned internal GPS”.
I have also adopted and used Systems Theory and language as a construct to provide a framework about the human being. This framework frees me from the so called “scientific” method, a linear, somewhat simplistic conceptual approach. When A then B and when A and B then C and so on. I have reviewed Systems Theory applied to understanding the human being in another article on this site. Suffice it to say the human system is a goal oriented, set of interacting elements, inner directed, sensing (feeling), processing (thinking), and acting (behaving) with feedback loops providing real time data about each of these processes and about each of the elements as well as from the environment. Today I will focus on the second feature “inner directed”. I have spoken of the first, “goal oriented”, in earlier columns and another time I will return to it again. In future columns I will elaborate on each of these processes and elements.
In my early workshops and in early versions of this column, when speaking of concepts useful to me, I have used various phrases lacking the verbal clarity I have wished for. This has frequently led to significant questions from my audiences. So it is with “inner directed”, “energy comes from within”, “each of us has our journey inside”, “just as the seed has everything in it which it will become so it is that everything is here when we are born”. The world of technology has brought us a language very useful to describing and better understanding the human being. Today I focus on “inner directed”.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a space-based global navigation satellite system (GNS). At once, this tool brings us our location and direction in the context of our whole world within and beyond while providing words to clarify my experience. And so – “inner directed” – the experience and so concept of an inner-based positional and directional system (IPS), an inner-based global navigation (INS) which is part of me and, I believe, within every human being. That is, I have, and am born within myself, a capacity to know, in the present, in real time, where I am, with respect to where I have been and where I am going. I am speaking beyond geographic. That is, I have an internal tracking element. This element interacts with others comprising the Human Person System. It is subject to the changes and fluctuations of the other elements inasmuch as it is just one element of many supporting homeomorphogenesis, another personal concept I write of in another article.
The GPS does not show undeveloped areas of our landscape in a detail which includes new roads and structures and is upgraded from time to time to include new information. Similarly our inner-based positioning system (IPS) may not have, in the present, all the details. However the upgrading of our IPS is occurring in the present and continuously. My awareness of my GPS can be continuous, continual or not at all. That is, I may be constantly looking at my GPS increasing my risk of an accident as I drive. I more likely look at it intermittently and I may not consult it at all or may not even have one. So it is with my IPS. I may be consumed with my IPS or the details of my IPS so that I am relatively aperceptive to other elements of my system and/or to the external environment (perhaps leading to judgment by others of autism? psychosis?)
My IPS came with me and so I believe everyone has one. Very early in my life my Nervous System, data processing system, is not yet fully mature and becomes so quickly after birth. At that time, without having to be knowledgeable or even conscious of its presence, its effect on my being is active and its use begins to be refined. As its use is being exercised my IPS becomes clearer and a critical element in my living of my life. It becomes the reference for my decisions, my direction in life, my very physical orientation and management of my total person, physically, cognitively, emotionally, spiritually and in any other dimension one may want to use to describe living of life.
All this leads me to experience myself in my position, location, function, and situation, aware of where I have been and where I may go to get where I want to be, within and beyond and beyond the physical. Thus when I experience myself in a position, location, function, situation in which I do not wish to be (an experience usually identified by words describing some level of malfunctioning – I do not feel good – I feel bad – I am uneasy, etc) I must consult (get in touch with) my IPS for where I am and where I may go next. This calls for my being aware of such – self awareness. This also calls for strategies to see my IPS clearer such as meditation, prayer and other means which give me greater access to my insides. I can clarify what I feel, think and where I am and where my IPS informs me I need to proceed in order to get back on my road and on my journey. Ideally I stay in touch with my IPS to be aware of my position where I am, where I want to be and am going and where I want to be as I live my life.
In the macro system I interact with the world around me and its elements and events. These do indeed interact with where I want to be. My primary directional device does not come from the world around me but rather from within. Critical to being where I want to be in the journey I am taking is my awareness of and the clarity of my Internal Positioning System.
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