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Tuesday, July 26, 2016.  There is not topic on earth that any human being can consider that includes a process that is not a part of (connected within, integral to) – our SHARED human specie’s mind.

If you have not listened to this very short video segment by Dr. Daniel Siegel describing his first-ever shared definition of mind, please do so!

DEFINITION OF MIND

Many related and very informative/important links appear on the right side of the screen beside this video.  If you are not familiar with Siegel’s work, watching any of these videos will give you a view of a universe of human experience that matters to ALL 7.4+ billion of us on the planet at this point in time.

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Next I want to present a link to the ONLY election-related article I have or will read.  I mention at the same time the work of Dr. Carl Jung, especially as it was studied in the art therapy master’s program at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque I went through 1989-1991.

Jung’s psychology describes what he termed the human shadow.  Within that shadow lies all that is “good” and all that is “bad” in terms of potential for individuals separately and collectively.

He also described the fundamental archetypes of humanity.  He described the “collective unconscious” in terms of the appearance of patterns within human life that are ‘dramas’ played out over and over and over again over time.

In the particular post-Jungian archetypal theories of art therapy program that I studied within, we can to learn how to do two very important things:  (1) identify IMAGES in all their forms as they are expressed by humans, and (2) identify what images human/humanity’s actions – as we might consider them even to be symptoms – are communicating about our individual/shared experience of being alive.

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It has taken me not quite 24 hours since reading this article

ELECTION 2016 — Understanding Trump:  To stand up to Trump, first we have to understand who he appeals to, and why— by George Lakoff / AlterNet July 22, 2016

to do enough of my own personal inner thinking correction work necessary so that I could achieve a more objective assessment of what the content of this article MEANS to me.

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Essentially, humanity is one unified family.  We are essentially a “one being” in many bodies, operating not unlike the individual cells and molecules of our body does.

Using Jung’s concepts I can now begin to talk with myself about the fact that what we are seeing in America today, as it is impeccably described in  Lakoff’s article, is the splitting of a whole archetype of the potential in our collective/individual SHADOW – our potential for ‘good’ and our potential for ‘bad’.

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While we are half-organic beings living in an organic universe, I believe we are also a unique species in that we have potential for CONSCIOUSNESS – which I believe comes from the spiritual half of who we have been created to be as beings.  Just as we elementally share all organic existence as a “one thing” with ALL existence here, we also share our collective mind (Siegel) including ALL our potentials (Jung).

Every one of us has prejudices, blank spots in our percentage of consciousness, human elements of greed, injustice – whatever any of us are capable of ALL of us are capable of – like it or not.

Where and how can we CHOOSE among all the inner and outer options possible for humankind?

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If you read the above article you will have the straight-line (all the ducks lined up in the proverbial row) of the kind of thinking that I certainly deem ignorant, unwise, dangerous and WRONG.  Yet at the same time my marvelous right-brain-body-based image-making poetic metaphoric-information processing shows me that the row does not need to be side-to-side.  If it is one-in-front-of-the-other in line, the right considerations, the just, fair, honest, kind, truthful actions, can work to knock these ducks out of action – an image more like a great toppling line of dominoes.

(NOTE:  Just as I wrote those words the battery in my mouse died.  Yesterday in considering the above article as soon as I went online to look for the origin of the word “bigot” my computer crashed.  Chuckle folks!  It’s all good!  The human race is moving through our collective stage of evolutionary adolescence into our next destined stage of mature adulthood.  This IS happening – now.)

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My essential main point of this post as it involves the important information in this article is that I am not at all sure that the suggested 98% unconscious/2% conscious operation of the human brain is not good enough at this point in our history.

One way I walk around this concept in my mind is to consider the writings of Stephen Porges with his Polyvagal Theory.  Somewhere within my reading of his work, and I can’t tell where at the moment, is that the vagal nerve system (Porges tells us evolved from the nerves of ancient jawless fish, highly geared into our more modern facial expression and brain reading of those expression-networks) – feeds different information in different ways to female versus male brains.

Most simply put, as I comprehend it, is that female vagal nerve system, as it collects visceral information (gut), and more, feeds the info through a split in the nerve to both hemispheres of the brain so that information arrives and can be processed in both hemispheres at the same time.  The nerve system for males runs straight to the left brain so that they process it in the left hemisphere first and THEN have to transfer the info across the ‘great divide’ into their right brain hemisphere to integrate information.

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This isn’t the time for me to broaden this description.  I mention it only as I think these processes might influence the 98%/2% split.

Because I am preparing to move my library is in complete disarray.  I cannot locate the neuroscientist’s book – so was it Damasio….

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Not in this book but I see this is another one I need in my library on these topics

Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (March 6, 2012) by Dr. Antonio Damasio

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….or another — who talks about the operations of our brain — being POETIC?

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What IS the poem being written in America right now – by ALL of us?

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In example – I DID NOT KNOW THIS!!

African-American Women Now Top the List of Most-Educated Group in the Country

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….to be continued….

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One of my next need-to-read books:  Education for Critical Consciousness by Paulo Freire

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Here is my first book out in ebook format as it provides an outline of the conditions of my malevolent childhood.  Click here to view or purchase–

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

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Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame