I've mentioned previously I am opening myself up to working with beliefs that are less rooted in emperical experience, and of a more intuitive origin. A representative example I have in mind is "qi" or "chakrasauce", notions of "energy within the body". I'd like to clarify what I mean by "working with" here.
On the one hand, I'm uncomfortable with people treating all beliefs or truths the same way, as if they are all the same kind of "real". Even our most genuine experience of some concepts does not cause them to be manifest outside of our own experience. And if they are not extrinsic, we must speak about them with conscious relativity. In fact when I say "uncomfortable" I actually mean "annoyed", because I consider the maintaining these distinctions, an awareness of your level of justified certainty, to be a key good habit of mental hygeine.
On the other hand, if we are clear about these things, we needn't let the subjective aspect of experience keep us from studying and discussing it. What arises when one tries to understand subjective experience is the philosophy of mind. In fact, the relativity itself is the source of perhaps a key issue of this inquiry: we are all so exquisitely unique, yet so much of the human experiene can be related and shared, so what are the common building blocks versus how do our particular lives fit these blocks together?
The philosophy of mind is the study of theories of mind, by which I mean models of minds. Consider: the notion of qi is a little bit of theory of mind that models some aspect of our experience that may be common to many of us, rather than an actual physical energy, and therefore is studyable as such.
Upfront, all models are wrong but some are useful. Namely, certain thought habits can be used to update the latent theory of mind that your brain is running as a biocomputer. Human nature seems to me to be that our brains all have potential for tremendous plasticity, yet we stubbornly resist change. This resistence punishes us, hence suffering, but we do it anyway because acceptance of our ignorance is terrifying. (This is obviously a variant of a core premise of Buddhism.) The ways we position ourselves along this axis explain a great deal of our social behaviors. Having a good philosophy of mind and working feedback mechanisms helps you as a social creature, improving your relationships with others and especially with yourself.
So it behooves me to be a student of experience, and doing that requires especially studying my own experience. The purpose of this blog is to help me document and share what I learn.
Something personal: my upbringing implanted in me accusations that any time I thought I had a good understanding of people and felt that's something people might value and cherish in me, it was only ever my indulging in a fit of pride, narcissism, or megalomania, and certainly insubbordination. Talking about what I do here and letting you judge me as you will is an extreme act of vulnerability for me. I hope you see in my actions that I respect everyone's responsibility to make their own meaning in their lives, I am only offering my experience to share and that my being honest and vulnerable is meant as an expression of my values.
Intended with that context, here's a bit of immodest honesty. A religion, with its stories, archetypes, opinions on human nature, and mores, is a packet of theory of mind. The intentional commitment to a theory of mind that is honest and useful is my proposal for empirical secular spiritual process. We gather our theories of mind from literally any source of stories: literature, therapy / self help, and improv leap to mind. I consider coaching to be one specific practice for putting such an understanding to a concrete use. And yes, this blog does have an aspect of advertising what I intend to be bringing to my clients no matter how my career evolves, and I think that is okay as long as I'm upfront about it.