Giving Thanks ...

Well it been ... well forever since I last blogged and I'm Jonesing for a good blognation about now ... so here it is for anyone who's still out there.

For those of you who aren't up to date on our quaint American customs today is Thanksgiving Day 2004 ... and I'm in Vermont spending it with my wife's brother and his family ... as well as my wife and daughter of course. Jason (my son) isn't up here with us even though he's in school up here for the rest of the year as he's back in New Jersey celebrating with his mom ... and from there he'll do a visit with my family completing the circle all around. This is kinda' what Thanksgiving is all about ... giving thanks for what's most important ... but especially for those relationships that are most important to us. It started out a few hundred years ago when the Pilgrams decided to thank the Indians for getting them through their first year in the New World by throwing a hellacious party!

They would have likely all died if left to their own devices (the Pilgrams that is ...) but the locals ... the Native American Indians stepped in and showed them how to survive and prosper. We know they prospered because the next year they threw this great party with turkey, corn, veggies ... and such ... although I don't know if they'd discoved Pumpkin Pie just yet ... as a way of both giving thanks for their blessings ... including being alive ... and their new found friends (this was before the Europeans figured out that the Native Americans were "savages" that held all the rights to the best resources over here ... and killed them for it all ... but that's another not so heartwarming story ...). So you see it was primarily about the relationships ... and at least for the Riggios remains that way today as well.

For me this is the crux anyway ... how we make the connections that define who we are and where we stand. This is both including and beyond our "personal" relationships ... those we have with others. It also goes to the fundamental relationship we have with the Universe ... or maybe better put within the Universe. The way we stand in relation to the Cosmos. Joseph Campbell might have called this our "personal cosmology." It is the form with which we hold reality to be what it is we conceive it to be ... and from which we operate and respond to it.

The MythoSelf model goes directly to this form. It operates on a tri-level basis organized as such:

There is the fundamental ground of one's being ... their personal ontology. Their personal ontology is held as a somatic form which represents the ground of their being. The most basis question in relation to this ontological position is the the question of whether they've organized their personal ontology in relation to a "benevolent" or a "malevolent" Universe. In other words is the Universe their 'friend' and an abundant, prosperous place, or is it an 'enemy" and out to get them? Their answer to this question forms the ground of their being and can be observed in the way they position themselves and move through the world ... especially in relation to others. This form is first and foremost held as a somatic process, which leads to the next phase of their awareness.

Arising from the "ontological ground of being" their is a description of the world that is constructed and which forms the basis of awareness - both pre-conscious and conscious. This description forms the basis of the way the events of one's life will be experienced ... the filtering and sorting patterns that the events are perceived through. Then the events of one's life are fit into pre-existing frames of experience that wrap around and define what these events are for the individual experiencing them. The events then becomes part of the description and further define the world according to the individual holding this description. At this level the 'description' can be perceived in both the somatic and structural form manifest by the individual. The structural form is contained in the representational form the individual constructs at a symbolic, iconic level for themselves. This will either be in relation to a blueprint in suppport of them becoming themselves or in opposition to them becoming themselves.

The structural form will in turn give rise to the functional description that the individual uses to respond to the world and from which their behaviors arise. This form is the expressed description of the world held semantically. The somatic and symbolic form takes on a semantic frame which generates a description in language. This language based description is the one most familiar to the individual. It becomes like a mantra that defines the world as they know it. Then in relation to this mantra they make all their conscious interpretations of the events of their lives ... and what to do about them. This is what others most experience of them ... their manifest behaviors.

So there's the overview of the model we use in the MythoSelf Process. Starting from the ontological ground of somatic form and experience a structural form is built on symbolic, iconic representations that generate the functional description that in turn generates the manifest responses and behaviors that are associated with 'who' and individual is known to be.

What the MythoSelf Process allows us to do is access ourselves at the levels below the responses and behaviors that we call ourselves ... and recognize ourselves for who we are responding and behaving in these ways. So instead of identifying with our responses and behaviors, or the descriptions that generate these responses and behaviors, we identify with the direct experience of being who we are ... as embodied spirits having a physical manifestation in this world ... and most especially in relation to others.

For this we give thanks ...

Joseph Riggio
25 November 2004
Stowe, Vermont

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!