Gordon White: A Coherent Christmas Miracle

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A Coherent Christmas Miracle

You feel what it means already. Coherence. It is a state where the body and the spirit and the mind and the weather and the land under your feet and your sense of the near-term all row in the right direction, all move with the pulse of Creation.

No part of you is ripped into separate experience. Flow. Groundedness. Confidence. Calmness. These are all cousins of coherence. Seen this way -at this point in the timeline- you have three states:

  1. Coherence
  2. De-coherence: Any assault on a component of coherence that you allow to anger or hurt you is a state of de-coherence
  3. Incoherence: The resulting outflow from your de-coherence -particularly an experience of your worldview not matching your experience of reality- that you reactively spread rather than process. See: your entire Facebook newsfeed
Coherence, then, is the ability to absorb new data points and understandings without them debasing or de-cohering you. Its secret lies with Alfred North Whitehead. It is a pivot away from the poorly-examined western belief in unchanging Being -that this is how things ARE. It is a pivot toward a flow model. You, your life, your world -all exist as dynamic, interrelated, Whiteheadian processes.

When a whirlpool de-coheres it is destroyed. If it maintains its coherence as water momentums ebb and flow it can last forever. For this, Whitehead used the term speculative philosophy:

“Speculative philosophy is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted.”

He sought to build a worldview that would unify disparate scientific and philosophical explanations into one, updating as new data came to light. It is the ultimate goal of the natural philosophers of old: have the best map for your journey through the universe.

And here -at this point in the timeline- our version of that noble goal requires the maturity to discard wrong data and pick up correct data without it de-cohering us or spreading incoherence us. This is done by being honest with yourself that your worldview -all our worldviews- are incomplete and making a promise that you will absorb new information even if it contravenes things that you once liked. That trend escalates next year. Be ready for it now.

It is a commitment to a flow model and it is a commitment to yourself to prevent attempts at decoherence to cascade through your health and your relationships and your experience of life.

It is something you have the responsibility to give freely to friends and family at this time of year. Given what 2016 hath wrought, decoherence and incoherence are what you are liable to find around the tree. Consider it a magical act to stay coherent, to make everyone go away more joyous than they arrived, more relaxed, one step closer to their own goal of coherence.

Be the Light that returns at this time
 
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