What Are Your Programmed Defaults?

Recently, I have had the idea of “default” floating about in my mind in relation to our attitudes, mindset, feelings, self-talk, and more…

Borrowing from computer science, “default” refers to: “a selection to be made automatically according to a computer program when the user does not specify a choice.” … this gets closer to the meaning I have been seeing in my own personal dynamics.

Did you ever find yourself in a kind of funky space which is usually accompanied with an endless string of self-talk that is critical, negative, and often filled with fear, doubt, shame, despair?

I would like to suggest that for some of us, this is the personality default or the natural egoic mind state into which we lapse unless we are focusing our awareness elsewhere. Perhaps it is also a picture of a natural human condition or angst which is simply part of being. It has been said that our condition and life is what we make it. Which is certainly true to at least some degree. Yet, unless we make choices about where our attention and awareness is focused, it will automatically default to a set of baseline personality parameters.

Of course, this baseline can be different for each person, based on their life experiences from conception onward.

It seems at a very basic level, we are beings of pure awareness and will.

We can be aware that we are aware.

We can make choices and act, react, and respond to the situation in which we find ourselves.

It seems to be a worthwhile exercise to sit and watch the egoic mind present the self-talk. This can provide us with insight and awareness about out individualized baseline or “default” programmed settings. These settings are in the deepest aspects of our conscious and unconscious dimensions of mind and exist within our psyche and cellular memories.

We often simply distract ourselves from these baseline default ‘settings’ though various activities, forms of entertainment, and of course, food, sex, drugs, and work… to name some of the most common ones… I’m sure you could add a few more specifics to the list from what you observe within yourself and others…

Many people simply live their lives, or so it seems, rather unconsciously controlled by these default settings which include early experiences and indoctrination into the familial and cultural milieu… aided of course by positive and negative energies and interactions with others.

The unexamined life can provide a sense of stability and also closed mindedness that leads easily to prejudices, biases, and wrong-right either-or thinking.

We cannot really change others, yet perhaps we can help break the unconscious cycles by providing a safe space for others to expand, grow, create, and explore without judgment or fear. We can influence others perhaps through questions or thoughts. But arguing, fighting, or debating from fixed perspectives and beliefs about ideology and differences usually leads to strengthening differences.

We can make changes most significantly at home… in the recesses of our own awareness, experience, and shadowland. We can shine a light on areas of repressed anger, passive aggressive ways we react, to the old patterns and defaults that lie and lay within our psyche.

We can and often do believe the negative self-talk… and along with others can support it with “evidence” from the past. The egoic mind seems almost devilish in its attempts to keep us powerless and disconnected from a more basic and intrinsic awareness of being… of the Life force and Energy itself.

So, of course, as we are mired in the default settings of negativity, we will look outside ourselves for affirmation, for love, for someone to say we are okay. .We will seek a loving environment of some kind… we may attach to a social group that we feel an affinity with so we do not feel the aloneness that is part of the human condition. We window shop for acceptance and for a soul mate or mates to be with.

In a very basic and scientific and energetic sense, we are never alone. The quantum and holographic nature of existence tends to show us the One interconnected and interacting and ever-changing Essence of Life… Yet in our personal experience we are tricked by our personality into constantly thinking we are separate… individual… apart…  rather than One with all that is…

So, what are your default settings like?

There have been many tricks of the trade within the sciences of psyche, whether it is defined as psychology, spirituality, religion, philosophy, or something else. There are ways to reframe thoughts, think positively, tend dreams, question the beliefs that lead to feeling a certain way, and of course the road that may lead to dependency to find an ‘expert’ … teacher…guide… therapist…to aid in the process of growth, exploration, and re-construction….This can be a useful if the one helping is advanced enough not to foster co-dependency…

Our tendency is to identify with whatever our current experience is… physical discomfort, thoughts, feelings, sensation, visuals… on and on…

It helps me to realize that these contents of consciousness have nothing to do with authentic identity… they are passing experiences and, while they can be quite useful in some ways, they have nothing to do with who we are…

Are we our thoughts? Are we our emotions? Are we our sensations? Are we our body? Are we our hopes, desires, attachments, beliefs, dreams, fears?

We have all these things as part of our experience of life, and they are not who we are in my experience at least.

So, who am I? Who are we?

These are questions that are basic and must be explored in a Life examined by all...

It is my experience that primarily I am both Being and Choosing… Life breathes through this 3D form someone named “John.” Life is one and I am because Life is and continues to breathe its life energy through this form… The essence of being human is one with Being… pure awareness… somewhat colored by the form it is coming through… like light through a stained glass window… I am awareness…consciousness…. And I have a will …a choosing mechanism… the ability to respond, act, serve… The unexamined life usually is simply reacting based upon personal preferences, the defaults of personality beliefs and desires…

So, when the mini or major shadows of life surround us, it seems a good time to explore the what is… what are the defaults of my psyche…my personality structure… telling me… and as we find awareness, we also may be granted an empowering spirit called Life to choose how we will respond.

May Life grant us grace in unleashing and cleansing the old defaults so we may live if the freedom of Life Mysterious Now…

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John Hutchinson - November 27, 2013
Sundance Center fro Conscious Living
www.sunhutch.com ~ john@sunhutch.com