What good is it to live in subjective truth? vol.2

In my last article, I talked about how living in the subjective truth will give us inner energy and connect us with our surroundings. In this article, I will continue to talk about what kind of state of mind and what kind of good things will come from living in the subjective truth.

When living in subjective truth, it becomes easier to be creative

When we live in subjective truth, we are more likely to be creative. There are several factors that contribute to this.

The first factor is that we will no longer be bound by common sense and existing frameworks. Living in subjective truth means valuing the truth for ourselves (not necessarily objective truth), so we don’t have to worry about factors such as the world’s common sense or how we are perceived by others more than necessary.

I’m sure we’ re all aware of the fact that being bound by common sense and stereotypes makes it difficult to be creative. If we think too strongly that “this is the way it should be” or “this is the way it is,” we will deny ourselves novel ideas and ways of thinking, or we will not be able to recognize information as it is in the first place.

(Albert Einstein statue details on display inside of Museum of Cosmonautics at Moscow in Russia.)

” Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. ”
(Albert Einstein)

It can be said that Einstein’s theory of relativity was born out of his questioning the absoluteness of space-time, which had been the premise of Newtonian mechanics. It can be said that Einstein was able to demonstrate his great creativity by living his own subjective truth and not being bound by the common sense of the world.

The second factor is the amount of information we perceive. When we live in subjective truth, our antennas are raised to collect information from the outside world. Even if we see the same thing or hear the same thing, the amount of information we perceive will differ depending on whether our antennas are up or not.

When you walk along the street you usually walk on, try to be aware of “round things” or “red things” as you walk. If you do this, you will be able to notice new things, such as “I didn’t know there were trees and flowers like this here,” or “I thought there were the same streetlights lined up, but when I looked closer, I saw that each one had a different design.”

In the same way, if we have a theme of subjective truth, information on that theme will naturally come to us. Whether we are watching the news, having a casual conversation with a colleague or a friend, or just observing what is going on in the city, information on topics close to the subjective truth will be caught by our antennas and we will receive it.

I would like to share with you one example that I have felt recently. It is about “sense”. When I attended a study group, the word “sense” was mentioned and the speaker said, “Sense is something that is not a skill. He said, “Sense is not a skill.” He also said, “Sense cannot be acquired by acquiring skills. (I think this is absolutely true.)

In a completely different venue, an e-mail exchange with the coaches of a local youth baseball team, they were talking about how difficult it is to teach baseball sense (hitting sense and pitching sense). (This is also absolutely true!)

This is a curious sensation, but sometimes we receive similar information at the same time, from different routes. Each one is often different on the surface, but their essence is similar.

In the example of “sense,” the common thread between the two situations is that “sense, unlike skill, is difficult to teach.”

Then the question arises for me. “What is sense?” “Is it really something that is difficult to teach?” I think the question arose because “ quest for essence” is one of the energies of subjective truth for me, and since I am engaged in education as my life’s work, information about the “acquisition of sense” caught my antennae.

While I was working with these questions in mind, I now had a goal-setting meeting with the head of the department in my company. In the dialogue of the goal-setting meeting, I said, “The key point of this half-year is how to set issues that will lead to the next growth of our company and the department, while getting the overall picture.”

That’s when it occurred to me. I suddenly thought, “Oh, that’s sense. “What I was looking for in the department heads was not individual skills, but a sense of taking the whole picture. Moreover, I was talking on the premise that it was possible to polish these skills, and the department heads seemed to think that they could do it if they tried.

After that conversation, a hypothesis about what sense is was verbalized.

Sense is to be able to grasp the whole picture that ordinary people can’t see.
(Ochiai’s hypothesis)

Ordinary people don’t see it, which is probably why they see it as “inborn” or “difficult to acquire. However, since we are talking about sense only being able to grasp the overall picture, I guess it is something that anyone can hone. The only difficulty is that it is not something that can be acquired through a logical or procedural process. This is my current hypothesis about sense.

Leaving aside the validity of this hypothesis, I have presented it as one example of how the antennae of a theme related to subjective truth can be raised to recognize a lot of information, from which questions can be generated and the seeds of ideas can be found.

The third factor is that it is easier to get different ideas through human interaction. In my previous article, I talked about how living the subjective truth makes it easier to expand our empathy-based human network. And when we interact with the people in our empathy-based human network, we can get different ideas that we cannot come up with by ourselves.

Different ideas here means, to be more precise, different ideas on the same theme (related to subjective truth).

The key is to have both “the same theme” and “different ideas.” It is difficult to create new ideas with “similar ideas on the same theme,” and it is difficult to combine “different ideas from completely different fields” into a single question or concept, although they can be stimulating.

The empathy-based human network that comes from living in subjective truth provides valuable information that combines both of these two things: the same theme (in the broadest sense) and different ideas.

Thus, it is easier to be creative when we live in subjective truth because (1) we are less likely to be caught up in common sense and existing frameworks, (2) we have a greater amount of information that catches our antennas in our daily lives, and (3) we can get “different ideas on the same theme” from empathy-based human networks.

When living in subjective truth, it is more likely to experience a flow state.

What are the moments when you experience a sense of immersion, a sense of time that is different from the norm?

For myself, there are times when I come across a good question and am immersed in the contemplation of it, or when I am playing tennis, which I love, and I am in good shape and my ability is balanced with my opponent’s, I get immersed and have a different sense of time than usual. It is not something that I can consciously reproduce, but I have the impression that I often get such a feeling naturally in such situations.

This kind of immersion in an activity, where you forget yourself, is called a flow state.

The definition of flow
A state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.
(Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience )

Characteristics of the subjective perception of being in a flow state
・Intense and focused concentration on what one is doing in the present moment
・Merging of action and awareness
・Loss of reflective self-consciousness (i.e., loss of awareness of oneself as a social actor)
・A sense that one can control one’s actions; that is, a sense that one can in principle deal with the situation because one knows how to respond to what ever happens next.
・Distortion of temporal experience (typically, a sense that time has passed faster than normal)
・Experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding, such that often the end goal is just an excuse for the process
(Nakamura, J. & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2002). The Concept of Flow )

When asked, “What are some of the experiences that have allowed you to have this feeling?” Many of us can recall the moment with some vivid memories and feelings.

The feeling of being in a flow state is enjoyable in itself, and is accompanied by a sense of happiness and fulfillment. It is truly one of those events that gives us a sense of being alive.

The reason why I am talking about flow is because I believe that the more we live in the subjective truth, the more likely we are to experience a state of flow, which, according to the 3+1 model of consciousness, is a direct connection between the subjective truth in our intuitive consciousness and the pleasant feelings in our bodily consciousness.

Because it is connected to the subjective truth, it brings up inner energy. And since it is connected to pleasant emotions, it encourages us to continue, along with a sense of enjoyment and happiness. And there is almost no intervention of the thinking consciousness.

Usually, by following the process of cognition and judgment by the thinking consciousness, it becomes a valve to coordinate the intuitive consciousness and the bodily consciousness, or to harmonize the outer world with the inner world.

In the flow state, however, there is no need for such adjustments by the thinking mind, and only the intuition and bodily consciousness are activated, and even then, there is no inconsistency between the consciousnesses, and no inconsistency between the external and internal worlds.

The merging of action and consciousness and the loss of the sense of time, which are characteristics of the flow state, symbolize that there is almost no intervention of the thinking consciousness. (Incidentally, I believe that our sense of time comes from our thinking consciousness, which I will discuss another time.)

What I want to emphasize here is that being connected to the subjective truth is the source of the energy to create the flow state. If we try to immerse ourselves in the thoughts of “what we should do” or “what will be appreciated if we do it,” it will be difficult to get close to the flow state. That’s because there is no inner energy flowing.

In this way, living in subjective truth makes it more likely that we will have one of life’s supreme experiences, the flow state. It may be a bit of an exaggeration to say that the ultimate form of living in subjective truth is to have a steady flow state, but that is the image I have of it.

Here are the quests of the day. (If you’d like, please share your thoughts in the comments.)

・When you are exploring with interest or curiosity, what are some of the stories that have inspired your creative ideas?

・What moments, if any, do you experience that are immersive or that give you an unusual sense of time?

Bunshiro Ochiai