#2 Energy, Systems & Dharma

In the previous Building Block, Energy and the Life Process, I brought forward some innovative ideas that were generated from an article I happened upon in financial news.  While forging a new direction for psychological research, I touched upon some very expansive, fundamental topics and intentionally painted with a broad brush.  That’s because the overall conceptual basics contained within these Building Blocks do necessarily repeat with nuanced contextual usage.  Although this allows an overly generalized methodology, it simultaneously structures a mechanical architecture in thermal support of the fluid administrative dynamics of individual personality development.   

Imagine yourself an expert gemologist and that you hold in the palm of your hand an exquisitely cut gem with an infinite number of facets.  As you look at the gem from one angle, a particular facet illuminates and you affix your jewelers loupe to assess the character depths of the gem.  Then tilt your hand ever so slightly and a second facet flashes and provides another tiny, yet varied look-see of the gem’s beauty and unique inner characteristics.  Another tilt of your palm, another flash, another view; and on-n-on it goes. 

With every flash, each facet provides an additional and variant reappearance of the same deep personality theme of the composite gem.  All together they display an integrated motif of the gem’s superlative global properties along with a captivating allure to look within again-n-again for greater clarity and understanding of the composite structure.  In like manner, every facet of an individual’s countenance and character, one’s personality, projects a psychosocial mosaic of energy events from deep within the psyche.       

Essentially, a machine is a physical system that uses energy to perform work to produce something of value.  A lever is a simple machine.  You apply energy at one end and the lever does the work to move something at the other end.  An auto assembly line is a bit more complex, but works the same way.  Push the “Power On” button at one end to supply energy for the work to be done on the line with a completed, off-to-the-dealership for sale automobile at the other.  Oversimplified?...sure; but you get the idea.     

Interestingly, psychological systems of personality development function the same way, but with some necessary distinctions from their cousins in the physical universe.

1) The energy source to the system is human consciousness.  It is the infinite, universal energy reservoir for all

developmental systems of individual personality.

2) The individual psyche is where work is done.  The energy dynamic either affirms or inhibits an individual’s evolving life

process. 

3) The work initiates an autonomous feedback mechanism within the self that assesses value to cognitive choices and

expected behavioral acts. 

Whether we’re aware of it or not, throughout one’s life process, the register of one’s behavior is routinely accompanied by self appraisal.  Altogether, the work for this is a natural process, an inherent energic impulse to always support and uphold the most efficient function of the aggregate system, the individual self.  It is psychology’s analog to the body’s ANS, but with intangibles.  Most important to an individual, however, is that the process defines the experiential thermal dynamic of dharma. 

A young child knows what it means when a toy is broken and may react in a myriad of ways according to the situation.  The child doesn’t necessarily care why; the bottom line is that the toy doesn’t work anymore.  It has become useless as a plaything.  

Many adults behave in similar fashion when their car unexpectedly won’t start.  Yet, as adults, we can rationalize that towed-to-the-shop car and the child’s broken toy as composite mechanical systems that have become inoperative.  No work is being done so, at zero efficiency, the products remain valueless (with regards to their intended purpose).   

All of us have reexamined, reconfigured, replaced or discarded personal thoughts, behavioral patterns and habits that have lost value over time.  Everyone makes these kinds of changes throughout the life process as the self expands and matures.  Just ask any dieter who has tried several programs that didn’t pan out.      

Yet consider a dieter’s initial decision to first adopt a particular regimen and then another choice, later in time, to drop that routine because of unsatisfactory results.  Both time-locked decisions had been made with life-affirming intentions to benefit the self and reflected the incessant impulse of dharma from within the psyche.

Those two dietary decisions were idiosyncratically filtered before cognition and behavioral intent was egoistically attached.  Changing course for one’s personal well being – physically, emotionally, mentally and/or spiritually -- is first and foremost an inherent psychological thermal dynamic.  It functions as a feedback mechanism with the intuitive mind.*  It is spoken of as one’s common sense or moral compass for it is absolute, ceaseless and self-evident of correct and proper personal behavior.  This is the essential psychic process that sets the ongoing patterns of individual character and countenance, the consolidated persona of one’s personality.              

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* See Glossary