Glossary
Dharma
From the Sanskrit root dhr, to uphold, sustain, to nourish. Dharma is deemed the essential natural law of function in the universe. In human affairs, dharma is most comfortably regarded as universal moral law, or more theologically as eternal righteousness and the foundation of ethical and social conduct.
Within human consciousness, and more specifically within individual awareness, dharma aptly unites veracity and virtue. To the intuitive mind (see below), this is known as one’s enhanced common sense and authorizes much more than a digital image of some physiological, gut-level emotion. Dharma inherently, unerringly beckons the correct course of all behavioral decisions.
Every psychological theory of personality development assumes the foundational workings of psychic energy and psychic force. Dharma brings them into unity. The activity of dharma becomes known by the degree of orderly and consistent personal and social conduct throughout one’s life. As such, dharma plays a most significant role in the developmental of one’s countenance and character, one’s personality.
Dharma’s natural tendency to affirmative personal growth is an essential part of the grand mystery that functions always for the betterment of an individual throughout one’s life. Genuine cognitive dissonance is essentially going against one’s better judgement. In actuality, it is an individual’s cognitive awareness of the intentional negation and/or repression of dharma’s influence. Doing so results with the increase of entropy (see below) within the psyche.
According to degree, an increase of psychic entropy will most often produce an autonomous, idiosyncratic propensity toward feelings of anxiety and guilt. Yet the character of dharma itself provides an avenue for honest, introspective personal contrition. This one behavioral act is recognized to play a paramount role within all the world’s major religions.
(See References, The Foundation, Part I to savor the robust individual and societal contextual evolution of dharma. “Dharma is like a boundless ocean teeming with priceless gems. The deeper you dive the more treasure you find.” Mahatma Gandhi)
Entropy
The individual psyche provides the connection to the entirety of human consciousness; and it is within the psyche where entropy interacts with dharma. They’re interplay results with the establishment of thermal guardrails that set the normal conditions for an individual’s personality development and behavioral decisions.
Basically, the strength of entropy becomes known to the self (and others) by multifaceted, idiosyncratically determined degrees of anxiety, stress and/or guilt. More severe degrees of psychic entropy can breach established homeostatic psychic guardrails. This will often result in manifest outbursts and displays of psychologically dysfunctional behavior that clearly inhibit an individual’s (naturally) evolving life process altogether.
Intuitive Mind
Many attribute the ubiquitous nature of the intuitive mind to be a gut-level feeling among human beings that is rooted in some emotional, ephemeral state of being that penetrates awareness. C.G. Jung and Sri Aurobindo among others all seem to acknowledge this unique state of consciousness by what is known to ancient Sanskrit as darśana.
Although there is no direct one-for-one English translation, darśana can be thought of as an impulse from dharma, the first extension of one’s enhanced common sense. The experience is that of direct knowing and is antecedent to cognition.
Darśana also embodies profound nuances of vision or insight spontaneously provided directly from within the psyche. The inherent psychological nature of darśana is fundamentally integrated into Hindu, Buddhist and Jain religions, and into the many yoga and philosophic disciplines derived from those theological traditions.
Karma
From the Sanskrit root kri, to act; to do; to make. It is also known as the law of action and reaction, cause and effect. At any point in time, an individual is the sum total of previous thoughts and acts and simultaneously, at every moment, the active builder of one’s personal, idiosyncratic life process going forward.
Psychic Homeostasis
An individual’s normal behavioral balance attained during the continual thermal interplay of dharma and entropy within the psyche.
Realization — This is how we come to know
We all have dreams, hopes and desires. They spontaneously formulate within the psyche as gossamer threads that are barely a blip on the screen of cognitive awareness. And yet they can mature through time with profound influences upon manifest behavior.
Hopes>>>Beliefs>>>Knowledge>>>Wisdom
Our hopes will, at times, strengthen with experience into beliefs.
In like manner, some beliefs strengthen with experience to consolidate
knowledge.
With time and trial, knowledge may strengthen and spontaneously yield
wisdom.
Applied with rectitude, wisdom reveals unassailable truth.
The Unconscious
Dharma Dynamics has no need of this psychological construct. I only include this term here because there are those who steadfastly, almost religiously, hold on to this relic of late 19th century. In doing so, they presuppose a vast, inestimable reservoir of unresolved personal issues of an individual where a trickster like Loki, Dolos or Atë stands guard with virtual god-like abilities to render behavioral judgments of good and evil.
My clinical observations have indicated that maintaining the concept of an unconscious adds absolutely nothing affirmative to the life process for anyone. Actually, it severely cripples the therapeutic process by increasing the degree entropy within one’s personality developmental systems. To be sure, it directly underscores a person’s feelings of helplessness and inhibits an individual's innate abilities of self-discovery while it weakens self-reliance and debilitates personal responsibility.
Also, interlacing the idea of an unconscious into the therapeutic process immediately creates a two-tiered environment that disproportionately subjugates the client to the assumed therapist’s expertise. As such, it becomes a useful artifact that therapists can conveniently hide behind when they are unsure of their diagnosis, therapeutic movement and direction. And, truth be told, it is can also become a useful catchall for therapists to unnecessarily extend the timeline of treatment for pecuniary enrichment.
(If there is a phrase or term used on this site that you would like to have further explained and detailed please send your request to dharmadynamics1@gmail.com)