Why does having a Vision for yourself matter? Why bother revising your Visions regularly?
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi estimates in Flow that the human mind can integrate roughly 126 bits of information per second. This seems like a reasonably large amount of information at first glance. However, it is estimated that our nervous system is being bombarded by millions of bits of information from which it can only extract and operate with 126 bits. As a result, the nervous system has to prioritize, delete, distort, and generalize to operate. As a result, a good deal is lost.
The criteria for this selection seem to be guided by several factors. Cognitive priming is an implicit memory effect where references to a given subject directly or indirectly will make recall related to that subject easier. This priming process also seems to affect the selection of information entering the nervous system. Priming effects are relatively easy to induce and tend to be fleeting. Another factor, cognitive momentum, can be thought of as the force and direction in which one’s thoughts are traveling, which they will continue to travel in unless acted upon by another cognitive force. Cognitive momentum presents a more significant challenge for making changes. Still, once made, they continue their trajectory until acted upon by another outside force. Finally, emotional inertia can be thought of as the tendency to resist changes to the restricted spectrum of emotions that a person has come to express habitually and which will use language and imagery of the cognitive aspects to maintain itself. This is the most challenging level to change, but once made, it will have significant long-term effects on all higher levels.
Working with Visions integrates all of these issues. You are engaged in cognitive priming by reviewing and reiterating your Visions regularly. Thinking about and interacting with the Visions causes your nervous system to “light up” memories associated with the Vision and to start to screen incoming information for data related to your Vision. By working to train the cognitive system with clear ideas and taking in new education and experience related to your Vision, you can exert enough force to change your overall cognitive momentum. Finally, by changing the language and imagery around your Visions concerning your emotions, you can break up your moods, overcome existing emotional inertia, and reset it to function following your Visions.
The more thoroughly you can include emotionally stimulating thoughts and imagery in your Visions in a clear and intellectually stimulating fashion, the more powerful they become.
This session of Orienting by Desire comes rather quickly behind our last. However, the speed of iteration can be helpful. Look at your last set of Visions and integrate the material discussed above, the model for decision processes, and any life experiences since your last Vision exercise. How have they changed in the past few days? How have they changed based on what you’ve learned? How have they changed by what you have experienced? Now take these older Visions, integrate your new understanding, and re-write them in an emotionally and intellectually stimulating fashion on a new sheet of paper.
Start considering the imagery of your Visions. For those of you artistically inclined, you can also start to draw some aspects of your Visions as we proceed. If you are less capable of creating your images, consider looking at and collecting images related to your Visions that inspire you. These images do not need to be perfect representations of your Visions, but they should create some sense of connection for you. This should be done in addition to writing well-formed statements to help bring the imagistic aspects of cognition into play in this process.
Setemheb 