Oh my god! I just have the most amazing visual thought when reflecting upon my last post. It made me realize that Dave Gray’s bubbles of belief AND my perspective of immersion are both right…if you see Dave’s “bubbles of belief” like scuba headgear (or inverted goldfish bowls) that are containers that contain our fluidity and separate sense of “self” consciousness, separate from the larger ocean of our collective consciousness.
This is why stepping back down the ladder of inference is so disorientating because you’re effectively losing your contained sense of “self” which is why there’s no sense of stability and everything feels like its up in the air because everything is floating, including yourself.
But this also perfectly fits in with vertical development seen as expanding and transforming the container we are contained within, thus giving us the capacity to comprehend and make sense of more complexity within our lives, versus horizontal development as filling up our existing container with knowledge.
This also resonates with the diagrams I’ve drawn in the past on “self” creativity, whereby we believe we are perfectly, self-contained individuals but we are actually fluid beings which force ourselves into containers, thus cutting off aspects of ourselves so as to “fit” into society’s expectations. But when we are able to broaden our container, more of our fluidity and unique creativity can emerge and fill the space we have created for our larger sense of selves.
And finally this also resonates with my metaphor of life and growth as a river. In effect, its like the knowledge flow I’m experiencing in my life and how it leaves behind sediment that sticks and builds up over time, thus allowing me to create some stable ground that I can stand on for my “self” which defines my uniqueness and creativity in this world. That’s what the progression of my life has felt like so far and how it relates to the steps on the ladder of inference.
