Exercise: Cycling Through the Curved Qualities
Having now covered five “curved” qualities of the Gift of Set and fifteen tools that utilize these features, let’s take a practical run through them all. This is only one pattern with the tools and qualities; other orders can be developed. Those of you who choose to develop other permutations are encouraged to share them along with how you used them. They can be quick approaches or more detailed processes. There are, in total, over a trillion potential strategies, so there are lots of options for developing your approach.
Look at your Visions and select one to run through this cycle.
Phase 1: Modeling
Identify a key challenge towards the accomplishment of your Vision. Using the component modeling tool, see the mechanisms that create this challenge towards your Visions. How does one set of behaviors or circumstances feed into another set of behaviors or circumstances to lock together into a closed system? Draw out the system so you can more clearly see it. Give this system a name to objectify it in your mind better.
Does this system play out across multiple areas of your life? For example, do you eat junk food and then feel shame over doing this, leading to an energy crash later in the day, leading you to drink sugar-loaded coffee drinks, only to make you feel bad about yourself even more?
Can you chunk up your system? Is there a higher level of operation that shows a more extensive pattern? In the example above, might “Ignore my Health” be feeding into “Pervasive Shame”? What might you call this larger-scale system, and what is the positive intention driver behind it?
Phase 2: Beliefing
How much of the challenge system to your Vision and its misplaced positive intention derive from your limiting beliefs? Have you created false beliefs about who you are and what you are capable of? Once you understand your limiting beliefs and false identifications, run these through the key reframing questions outlined previously. What was the source of these beliefs? Are they valid for everyone or in every situation? Are there places where they are not accurate?
Phase 3: Narrating
What was the narrative behind your challenge system and the beliefs and identifications that supported its continuing operation? Write the start of a new personal mythology that is dynamic, animated, and compelling in a single sentence. Continuing with the example above, if your previous meta-narrative was “Health-conscious people are jerks,” this could be re-narrated as “Health-conscious people value themselves and can create and contribute more as a result.”
Notice how your new meta-narrative can affect the challenge system that you identified? What is the outcome for the system if this meta-narrative changes?
Phase 4: Perspectiving
Now that we have a stronger sense of the challenges, it is time to refine your Vision. Look at your Vision and how it would manifest across your dimensions. How would your Vision’s realization affect you physically, emotionally, and mentally? What changes would you make in your ecology, community, and culture? Identify three key dimensions that are affected by your Vision and write out the results for each in a sentence of three to seven words. For ease, you might want to concentrate simply on the internal aspects.
Once you have these Visions outlined, look at your challenge system again and try to look at your Vision through the perspective of your challenge system. From its perspective, see how your multi-dimensional Vision impacts it. Can it survive that Vision coming into being? Is the positive intention behind the system better served by the changes you are looking to make? What changes might be needed to bring your Visions into congruence with the positive intention, and would it enhance it?
Now, shift into your new meta-narrative. How does your multi-dimensional Vision reflect and reinforce this new meta-narrative? Does this new meta-narrative lead to any conflicts with your Vision overall? What changes in your meta-narrative might be needed, or what aspects of your Visions need to be adjusted?
Now, focus on the space created by your shifting beliefs. With your new beliefs about what you are capable of, are your Visions connected with them? Are Visions still connected to your old beliefs and thus need to be re-shaped in accordance with your beliefs? Do your Visions demand or suggest a need for altering your beliefs?
Having gone through these various perspectives, look again at your multi-dimensioned Vision and adjust it to bring together what you have learned. If things are misaligned, consider how you might need to align your elements.
Phase 5: Germinating
Now that you know about your challenges and the multi-dimensional aspects of your Vision, it is time to create a germination system to allow your Vision to grow and emerge.
You now have a sense of your challenge, possibility, and Vision. Use these to guide the creation of a robust germinating system linking together various things. What inner capacities and external conditions would be needed to create a locked system that makes your Vision inevitable? What would be the evidence procedure so that you know this is happening? Might you need to make serious environmental changes to best actualize this overall process?
Try to do this from as wide of a perspective as possible, taking into account the broader ecology of the germinating system you are creating. Are there other things lurking in the background that you haven’t considered yet? If the germinating system starts to grow and become entirely online, are there people in your life who will try to oppose it? Are there elements within yourself that will act against your efforts? What kind of significant changes would you need to make to ensure that your new system can operate optimally?
You have now actively used capacities of the Gift of Set that all humans have, but few have ever dared to utilize consciously. Use them to guide your Work, and may you share your transformations in due time.
Setemheb 