Selflessness via a Tree of PH-L7 Centres

Framework

This Tree guides you in allowing yourself to recover so as to repair psychic damage and maintain personal equilibrium following a collapse.

This account is not a full exploration of psychosocial issues. It's purpose is to demonstrate that THEE is a model whose exploration generates findings that did not go into its construction. The specific aim is to scientifically validate conjectures developed in relation to the reversal of the oscillating duality and the identification of Root Level pressures of presumed biological origin. See more here.

Approach to Exposition:  The Tree emerged fully developed and so the usual logical methods of exposition are not appropriate. See more here.

Note: The main Selflessness level in this emergent framework appears to be KL4: Feel Good in Trusting because your collapse is caused by what feels like a betrayal of trust. The world on which you depended (i.e. your self and your situation) has fallen apart. Your well-being now depends on being able to enjoy trusting again. It may help to read this part first.

The Tree Spine

Seek Guidance at KL7 by Respecting Openness
Take Heart at KL4 by Feeling Good about Trusting
Find Energy at KL2 by Relying on Imagination
Make It Happen at KL1 by Activating Spontaneity.

There is a move from a higher plane of mentation down to concern for practical interaction. The two extreme Centres seem to take you out of yourself: at the top (KL7) you avoid being trapped in your own ruminations and self-pity, at the bottom (KL1) you engage with the world naturally. The other two Centres seem to force you back on yourself: the upper (KL4) enables relating, the lower (KL2) insists on the primacy of your own experience, however strange or unexpected.

In this central spine, the yourself v your situation duality is fused.

More about the Balanced Centres & Vertical Channels in the Spine

KL7: Seek Guidance → Selflessness via Selflessness

KL7_B: Respect Openness (PH5-L7)

Openness is an active experiential state that maintains the potential for creating meanings and for perceiving diverse meanings in stimuli and received messages. During a personal breakdown, it is common to have intrusive repetitive thoughts that lead nowhere. Communicating is commonly dominated by complaining or blaming, or ruminating miserably and anxiously. New meanings and communications are required, but you cannot initially know what they are. So openness must be given more time and serious attention than usual, and what emerges also requires respect. Ideally, you should be engaging with others who are also open and not quick to criticize, condemn or instruct.

Respect for openness allows you to focus on envisaging a transformation-KL6_Y, and demands that you require a transformed situation-KL6_S. Given the unavoidable depressive and paranoid features, openness will also challenge your trusting-KL4_B.

The key mechanism here is reflection: The potential for healing lies in your willingness to explore your mental life and be open to what emerges there. That in turn requires you to put ego to one side and reflect impartially, bouncing ideas off someone who is open and can act as a mirror, keeping their own feelings out of it. Classical psychoanalysis uses this approach. See more.
Note that this Centre contains the selflessness element (PH-L7) at the selflessness level (KL7)  in the Tree.

KL4: Take Heart → Selflessness via Well-being

KL4_B: Feel Good about Trusting (PH7-L7)

If, following collapse, you have someone that you know you can trust, then confiding in them is easy and this becomes your primary source of well-being. Getting continuing reassurance and comfort from acquaintances offers, at best, only short-term help. When trusting is a strain, it is only possible for rather short periods before suspicion and withdrawal develops. If no family member or friend is available for lengthy conversations, you might use a helping professional (e.g. personal trainer) who knows you, or retreat to a benign, trust-inducing environment. Alternatively, you may need to find a psychotherapist, trained in selflessness, who recognizes both your needs and your difficulty in trusting.

More on Trusting, Selflessness and Well-being

Everyone needs to trust in the ultimate beneficence of the universe, itself selfless. It may be a illusion (or delusion), but once shattered, dangers and threats are perceived everywhere and your well-being is markedly reduced. Ordinary social life revolves around trusting and your suspicious hostile attitude, can make coping an unpleasant struggle. Extending trust widely and selflessly is difficult for everyone, but particularly for those who are vulnerable or disconnected from their own spirituality. In practice, the minimum should include at least one confiding relationship, a community or social network within which you feel you belong, and a few deep values (see KL3 below).

What if Paranoia Reigns?

Breakdowns are far more likely in vulnerable people who have childhood experiences of loss, separation, neglect, rejection, abuse, or betrayal. This pattern naturally repeats in adulthood. If there is an unconscious goal of repairing the damage, a second relationships may be far more successful. It may also repeat because it has become a template and paranoid reactions then become your 'natural' mode of being. When the self is defined by mistrust, its breakdown may be a positive development. For severely damaged people, it is fortunate that trusting requires selflessness. But as recovery develops, doubts and suspicions will return. So more effort is required to ensure that trusting is viewed as the route to well-being. Meditative disciplines and spiritually-oriented self-care may help; or psychodynamic therapy.

Trusting commits you to impose on yourself the potential for transformation-KL6_Y, unlikely as that may seem. And it gets support from the transformed adaptation-KL6_S that you now require. Trusting requires you to become realistic about your wondering-KL5_Y, and it gets acceptance through your appreciation of speculations-KL5_S from those you confide in. Trust is powerfully boosted by your promotion of ultimate values-KL3: support for current ideals-KL3_S develops credibility, while upholding your own deepest values-KL3_Y is encouraging. In looking for guidance, trusting challenges your openness-KL7_B, and in looking for positive effects, it energizes your imagination-KL2_B.

KL2: Find Energy →  Selflessness via Certainty

KL2_B: Rely on Imagination (PH4-L7)

Your imagination can open up a world of possibilities and, in its own way, offers certainty that there are alternatives. Access to the imagination depends on a weakening of ego-control (hence selfless) and comes from where dreams are created (so relevant to your self). The usual rules of logic do not apply: features include magical thinking, parts become equal to the whole, associations become identities, and symbolic operations transform normal perceptions. When reality is being managed, imagination is a flow of experiences (images, feelings, sensations, thoughts &c) that are relevant and available to be used as you choose. For reasons that are not understood, you can depend on your imagination to point the way forward. Meditation, a selfless state, typically releases an imaginative flow: which is why it may be helpful in times of trouble.

Imagination and Psychosis

If imaginative functioning replaces reality-based thinking, you appear psychotic to others. Severe psychological disturbance often blocks the imaginative flow because of the realistic possibility of a psychotic decompensation. Selflessness then shows up as an absence of a self or its fragmentation self. In schizophrenic or schizoid individuals, there is typically a corresponding splitting of reality into 'good' and 'bad' aspects.

That imagination energizes your willingness to keep trusting-KL4_B. It will also reaffirm your deep values-KL3_Y, and align with current ideals-KL3_S. It must confirm any activation of spontaneity-KL1_B.

KL1: Make It Happen  → Selflessness via Performance

KL1_B: Activate Spontaneity (PH1-L7)

Spontaneity flows from deepest recesses of your authentic self. In a state of collapse, it is almost impossible to do anything beyond the basics of surviving. Performance is mechanical rather than spontaneous. As recovery progresses, spontaneity becomes possible for yourself and for those about you. You must make a positive decision to activate it in suitable situations and rely on your imagination to carry you through.

Your spontaneity will confirm your imagination-KL3_Y, and it should constrain your deep values-KL3_S. and channel your support for current ideals-KL1_B.

The Bi-Polar Levels

The other three levels—KL6, KL5, KL3—have two Centres each: these must take heed of each other and connect to the Centres on the spine.

KL6: Establish Your Position →  Selflessness via Autonomy

KL6: Enable Transformation (PH3-L7)

Except in films and fairy stories, nobody ever transforms themselves. A continuity of identity is essential and unavoidable. And yet dreams have a place and this is a realm where you still have autonomy. The potential for transformation must be preserved and taken seriously. Instead of continuity, your life has come to a sharp stop. The present has announced its ending, but your future has not yet been created. So you are in limbo. Take advantage of that by envisaging a transformation and identify potentials for change. At the same time, you must re-create imaginatively a new environment within which you would be able to adapt. There should be a reciprocity between what you envisage for yourself and this adaptation.

KL5: Clarify Your Effort  → Selflessness via Understanding

KL5: Clarify Wonder-(PH2-L7)

You have to understand yourself, your past and your possible futures in an impartial way. That entails wondering: about what happened, about the motives of others, about the influence of key people, about possible futures, and much else. Now is not the time to delude yourself with defensive postures. Those have failed you anyway. Your understanding must be impartial and selfless and the best way to develop it is to explain to a confidante the variety of thoughts and ideas that come to mind as you ask yourself all the obvious questions. Encourage confidantes to speculate too and appreciate what they offer.

KL3: Why You Persevere →  Selflessness via Acceptability

KL3: Promote Ultimate Values (PH6-L7)

Any identity is sustained by the values held. Not superficial preferences or activities, not even ideologies, but the deepest values that give your life its meaning. Values like freedom, beauty, truth, compassion, creativity, peace, harmony, and others. These values are universal and perennial, hence intrinsically selfless in nature. They cannot (or should not) be damaged by your destabilization because your collapse is a about self and ego. Breakdown cannot touch or taint a part of your life that is most acceptable to others. By re-activating and re-contacting these values, you are enlivened and the road to re-integrating with others opens up.

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• See how the framework may be used (or misused).
• Further notes on this framework.

  OR

• Compare the 7 emergent Tree frameworks and review findings.

Previous updating: 24-Mar-2014. Last updated 24-Jan-2015.