ATTRACTOR FRAMES

There is a part of your mind that makes decisions. It’s at a meta-level. Now it is true that at the primary level you can make a simple choice. You can choose to go toward something attractive that you like and that gives you pleasure. You can choose to move away from something aversive that you dislike because it creates pain. At the primary level, our neurology is designed for this and so it comes equipped with toward and away from energies (one of our meta- programs). That happens pretty much automatically and without thought.

But decision generally involves thought. Lots of thoughts. Thoughts this way and thoughts that way. We go back and for as we weigh the pros and cons of a choice. We alternate back and forth, saying yes one minute, and then no the next as we weigh the advantages and disadvantages of the choice before us. At this point we are in-decisive. We are in a state of doubt. We don’t know what to choose. Yet eventually we “make up our mind” and so we say no to one side of the choice and yes to the other. It is this cutting off of some alternatives that allows us to make a decision. And the word de-cision speaks of this. We cut (-cision) off and away from (de-) one thing from another thing. Ah, within a decision we use our primary states of validation (yes) and dis-validation (no).

The executive part of your mind that makes up your mind makes a choice, chooses, decides, says yes and no and so cuts a pathway that will determine your actions and orientation. When that part of your mind does this, it terminates the indecision, throws its energy one way, and so sends messages to your mind-body system to make the internal and external changes that the decision formats.

Actually the executive part of your mind is a pretty high level facet of your meta-consciousness and one connected with the part of your mind that creates and sets intentions. In fact, to intend to do something, believe something, feel something, identify with something, etc. is part of the decision process. In this way the conative part of our mind and personality operates as one of your key faculties. That’s because, you get to choose. In fact, without the programming of instincts with content-information like animals, you have to choose. You don’t have a choice about not choosing!

Yet when you choose, when you make up your mind, you formulate the content of your meta- consciousness. You set the higher frames of your mind which operate like self-organizing attractors in a system. What does this mean? It means that the decisions operate as your intentions and these intentions as beliefs (after all, it’s beliefs all the way up) operate in a way that we typically describe as a self-fulfilling prophesy. That is, what you believe and expect to get is precisely what you are set to see, perceive, and receive. If you decide to believe that you live in a friendly universe and that positive intentions drive what people do, so you will find that in the world. You attract friendliness and positive intentions to yourself. You attract it inside yourself — as your way of seeing, processing information, interpreting, creating meaning. You attract it outside as it invites those who agree to befriend you.

The attractor that you set by your decision, intention, and belief operates like the “rules of the game.” That if we think about it as a “game” —an inner game, these are the rules of the game which set in motion the way you play the game of life and the game that you invite others to play with you. Yet because all of this comes from your meta-consciousness, most of this is outside- of-consciousness. It’s part of your “unconscious mind” and to the extent that it is, it operates automatically and without your awareness. No wonder frame game analysis then becomes such a powerful Neuro-Semantic tool for gaining control over this facet of your unconscious mind.

The decision-intention-belief that you set through your yes-ing one choice and cutting off by no- ing the other choices also sets a “standing order” in your mind. This offers another way to think about an self-organizing attractor. The attractor is a standing order about what to sort for, pay attention to, notice, respond to, and punctuate. That standing order may be a taboo — what you have decided to prohibit and forbid, or it may be a command — what to welcome into your consciousness. So, given all of this: What self-organizing attractors have been set in your meta-consciousness as standing orders, executive policies for coping and mastering things, and the rules of the games you play? What patterns do you find keep repeating in your life? What do you keep attracting time and again, year after year, in your life, in your finances, in your relationships, in your health, in your business, in your fitness? And even more important — what new policies would you like to establish? What standing orders would you like to executively make and set in your meta- consciousness?

Your self-organizing attractors do not absolutely create your “reality.” Oh that things were that simple! But they are not. Your self-organizing attractor frames (as meta-states) interact with “reality.” In fact, we could say this, your self-organizing attractor frames is the inner “reality” that you create as you map things from your experiences. You then use them to test out how well those maps work on external reality.

So attracting things to you is not an absolute process, but a relative one and dependent on the accuracy and usefulness of your maps. If you map out something totally irrational and erroneous, you only create a very un-useful map that will put you at odds with reality as it exists beyond your nervous system—physical reality, social reality, political reality, etc. To quote from Korzybski, a map is only as good and useful as it has some correspondence to the territory, at least enough so that you can use it in navigating to the places that you want to visit and experience.