[K-list] The Exceptional Human Experience Process #5

[Guest guest]

This will cover # 6: Depotentiating activities and #7 Results of depotentiation

(See below for the 5 "stages" and 12 "characteristics.)

Stage 1: The Initiating Event/Experience

#6: Depotentiating activities: Exercising one or several forms of

defense mechanisms: denial repression, rationalization, projection,

and so on, in which the experience and its inherent conflict may be

consciously ignored, mitigated, explained or laughed away. Rigid

compartmentalizing of life and activities in an effort to revert to

pre-experience order and status quo; choices viewed as either/or,

reality as black or white. Other experiencers and their experiences

may be ridiculed with vehemence.

#7 Results of Depotentiation: The EEer shuts down to experience.

Stage 2: Search for Reconciliation

#6: Depotentiating activities: Locking immediately into the first

ideology, method, or practice that accepts EEer and EE;

preoccupation/addiction to tools, ritualistic practices and/or

idolizing their practitioners (e.g., guru worship, abuse of psychic

hotlines).

#7 Results of depotentiation: Wider search is discontinued and the

EEer locks and/or converts into a new, narrow framework with its

practitioners. Locus of authority shifts, but the search and answers

continue to reside outside of self.

Stage 3: Between Two Worlds

#6: Depotentiating activities: Minimizing previous EE(s) and prior

search activity, including any insights, discoveries, meaning, and

short-term aftereffects achieved about self and alternative

realities; categorizing own EE(s) and quest as aberration of "real"

life; re-classifying and lumping all experiencers together and their

views, methods, and tools as total garbage; returning to the everyday

world and its activities with a vengeance and zeal to make up for

perceived lost time. Adopting the slogan "ignorance is bliss" and/or

one of several escape/avoidance behaviors in efforts to ward off/shift

focus away from EE(s) and spontaneous glimpses of the experiential

paradigm.

#7 Results of depotentiation: Experiencer and the search are

side-railed for months, years, or even a lifetime. Long-term

cognitive dissonance festers, and chronic unease, use of defense

mechanisms, and inertia take their toll on body, mind, and spirit.

Stage 4: In the Experiential Paradigm

#6 Depotentiating activities: Reluctance to explore further levels of

awareness and/or entertain/select new lifestyle, pursuits, and

professional options that seem to further widen the gap between EHEer

and those "left behind." Clinging to old-world emotional attachments

while body, mind, and soul have crossed into the new world.

Endeavoring to awaken (significant) others before their time.

#7 Results of depotentiation: The EHEer locks into a routine that

allows for larger world view, but does not investigate options

further, nor endeavor to increase overall awareness; remains

emotionally attached to specific people, values, and/or things;

experiences aftereffects of deep sadness and loss.

Stage 5: A New Way of Being in the World

#6: Depotentiating activities: Reluctance to recognize that even a

seemingly connected and purposeful life can still carry doubts,

fears, frustrations, and that these also can be signposts that leave

EE/EHE aftereffects yet unresolved, and that serve as

compass-pointers for the process; requiring perfection of self and

others; getting caught up in formalizing, controlling "the goal"

rather than recalling that the process leads naturally to "the goal."

#7 Results of depotentiation: The EHEer may temporarily encounter

setbacks, indecision by reverting to old outworn, yet familiar

defenses; personal demands for perfection or desiring to will or

control outcomes stalls (sense of) fulfillment; potential

contributions do not take form, are not "brought back to earth," new

EEs are not recognized or transmuted; long-term aftereffects of one

or more previous EHEs remain dormant.

Next to come #8: "Potentiating activities: and #9 Results of potentiation

Love, Hillary

******************

It starts with an outline of 5 developmental stages worked out by Rhea White of the EHE Network:

1. The initiating event/experience

2. Search for reconciliation

3. Between two worlds

4. In the experiential paradigm

5. A new way of being in the world.

Suzanne V. Brown has taken these stages further, saying that "within

each of the stages there are qualitative sets of attributive

characteristics that could be used to distinguish (more or less) one

stage from the others."

So each stage is divided into 12 sets of characteristics, ultimately forming a matrix of 60 cells.

1. Definition

2. Examples

3. Search focus

4. Questions asked

5. Cognitive dissonance

6. Depotentiating activities

7. Results of depotentiation

8. Potentiating activities

9. Results of potentiation

10. Challenges

11. Critical juncture

12. Crossroads to next stage.