Since humans began to think, we developed ideas and beliefs to feel safe and secure in our abstract reality. But now, the mutually confirmed beliefs and identity of our traditional cultures have collapsed.

Nowadays, individuals must find their own safety.

Now we have to 'find ourselves' on a practical and spiritual level.

The main modern challenge to all educators and parents, is to help us discover and develop what we want to do and who we want to be.

Being a fulfilled individual and believing in ourselves are the modern cultural ideals – "you are unique, a special individual", "believe in your dreams".

And inevitably, new-age gurus started talking about self-realisation.

In an attempt to give ourselves something objectively 'real' and 'true' to believe in and hold onto, we developed scientific reality by focusing through larger telescopes and smaller microscopes.

Then, Einstein told us everything is energy and light. Perhaps in another million years humans will evolve to perceive themselves as a 'real self' full of light and energy.

But it's ridiculous, right now we could be doing what every animal does, experiencing the safety and wholeness of panaral reality.

Focused sensing is blind to panaral reality.

Panaral reality is safe and whole, just being without knowing or needing to know.

What it lacks, is a sense of individual purpose and identity. And also any need for individual purpose and identity.

Our identity won't disappear, our sense of purpose and meaning in life won't vanish, it'll just be secondary for a moment, not compulsively repeating its own habitual routines all the time.

We need regular brief panaral periods like every other animal. Other animals need them to be safe in actual reality, we need them to be safe from our abstract reality.

We need to be able to forget about ourselves, to stop our routine background thinking, at any time, spontaneously and naturally.

What we are now, and what we think we can become, is being severely limited by only recognising what we can be by focusing.

The individual and social situation we've created is crazy and stupid, and it's been created by this self-obsessed focused box we're stuck in, .

And recently, all our codes of work, play, etiquette, and mating habits, and the possibilities of how to break those codes, have rapidly diversified and multiplied.

A chaotic state in our herd mentality – our collective social identity – has developed.

Our modern fight for survival has transferred to the abstract dimension of rights, beliefs, ideas, and opinions.

Without embracing the entirety of humanity, our modern collective psychology lacks security. Rejoicing in the rich tapestry of life is something the best of us agree on and aim at.

And our modern liberal thinking to contain the diversity of beliefs – rather than infallible rulers forcing a consensus of ideas – is a great step for civilisation.

And this is truly the best option our exclusively focused understanding of life can offer.

Gandhi and Mandela were wonderful, but the colours in our rich tapestry, and the groups within groups, are always multiplying. It's not going to stop suddenly. There will always be an increasing amount of new ways to identify ourselves.

The chaos in only ever exclusively focusing, is preprogrammed.

The fragmentation inherent in focusing is relentless. All the new trends and their derivations will inevitably get even more individualistic and more abstract.

And we accept it, even when we don't like it we accept this chaos is happening and think there's nothing we can do about it.

But this or something like it is what we could expect from a culture which only looks for security and safety by focusing.

And all the time we ignore panaral reality with its awareness of everything happening. How on earth could we ever hope to develop empathy for 'everything' – for the common good – without first being aware of it as a whole?

Our rational and abstract ten year early education is training a specialised form of abstract focused humanity – forcing all panaral sensitivity out of existence.

It's not our essential nature or any higher principle which dominates modern social thinking – it's how we identify ourselves, our abstract and projected individual image.

The justifiable and even legally acknowledged sense of our individual self, is our abstract image, our idea of who we are, who we think we are. How we identify ourselves has the highest social validity.

Whatever you think you are, IS the deciding point.

A comedian bought it on the point when he couldn't get served at a drive-in burger cafe because he was on foot, so he told them "I identify as a car".

Our Projected Image
Quite generally in modern society, projected images are the form in which human individuality is recognised and acknowledged.

This started developing with industrial mirrors around 1850, when our self-image rose from the murky depths of reflections in water to a vivid practical everyday experience of self-reflection. And a century later we could record and pre-record our reflected image.

It's so normal that we don't notice but television through to social media, are abstract images. They are projections on a screen.

What we're looking at, listening to, and understanding, is a representation of reality which is continually becoming more abstract. And it's only trying to replicate reality as sensed by focusing.

In 2011 image filtering (to show what you would look like if you were the opposite sex, or another species, or with perfect make-up), started on Snapchat and Instagram. And now AI is creating a new range of surreal pictures and music in an abstract reality which is even more fascinating and enticing.

We're setting ourselves up to live in a focused and abstract tunnel vision world.

And again the point is, we accept it even if we don't like it, we accept this is happening and think there's nothing we can do about it... and there is nothing we can do from a focused perspective.

So now, we have an abstract image of ourselves, which we try to believe in and then celebrate socially. And it's basically the same situation early man was in – it doesn't matter so much if it's the actual truth, as long as it's socially confirmed and emotionally gratifying.

And this is happening because focusing needs focal points, and individuals need relationships to feel whole.

There are a fascinating variety of psychological conditions which this generates; and we could spend centuries analysing all the curiosities.

But the central energy and confusion – the desperate search for identity and purpose – is still coming from the age-old question of "Who am I?".

And all the time we're ignoring part of our essential nature – reality as experienced panarally.

Panaral awareness opens up a whole new world, a whole new side of life and reality. There's no sense of the abstract, and no question about "who am I?". We can experience just being and a sense of wholeness. It is no coincidence that this is also how all other animals stay safe.

Panaral reality is another way of experiencing life. It's a sense of the attitude of other people, the volume and tone of their voice, (the colours they wear, their shape and size, the speed and direction they move, the sound of their shoes) – it never even considers what people say or how they identify on an abstract level.

We're habitually almost psychotically wanting to do something, go somewhere, or think something. This is the nature of wanting and learnt behaviour. We focus on the things we want and how to get them. And there is no way to stop the process continually repeating, except for the vague nothingness of letting-go.

The tunnel vision of our human experiment has become a mad scientist who is still looking for reasons and safety through focused eyes.

We have an ingrown self-absorbed understanding of life. We have inadvertently suppressed part of our basic awareness, and intelligence. To continue on this path will lead to stupidity, anxiety, and ultimately insanity.

And this is all such a hopelessly pessimistic view of modern civilised man that it would be unmentionable – except for the solution that if we want safety, peace, and a feeling of wholeness and wholesomeness, then we need to learn how animals do it.

The key to solving our cultural and individual chaos, is to realise that in order to survive, all other animals coordinate or alternate almost all of their focused activities with periods of panaral sensing. Panaral awareness is the natural counterbalance to focusing, and the cure for overfocusing.

Yes, we need a purpose in life, we need focal points, but we need to learn to coordinate or alternate them with panaral sensing. Panaring makes focused activity secure, safe, and reliable.

Regular periods of panaral sensing are necessary for our human sanity. Other animals need them to be safe in actual reality, we need them to be safe from our abstract reality.

We desperately need short interruptions to the continuous routine mechanics of the ego and its projections. Short experiences of pure panaral receptivity interrupting our habitual sense of ego, our subject-object consciousness, our thinking-knowing-doing consciousness.

Panaral reality is a moment of being without any need for individuality, identity or purpose. Without wanting to be or do anything except feel the satisfaction of being panaral and connected with the environment.

The panaral experience isn't a new religion to identify with, we don't have to believe in it for it to work. It's not even really a skill, though humans may need to think this to learn it.

It's a natural way of being, something animals just do without even thinking about.

We're not using all our basic and natural sensory abilities to experience and understand the world and our lives.

It's been tried and tested by animals for billions of years – it is obviously part of a successful method to survive. Every animal uses it. Every animal except humans.

Please continue with Solid Ground

Back to Chapter Three : Civilisation's Habitual Ruts
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