Friday, July 25, 2008

The Inner Journey

I'm supposed to write about the Bootstrapper's Inner Journey. You already know about the Outer Journey, the one that goes from Preideation to Growth. A while ago I theorized with Bijoy and others that there is also an inner journey that may be just as important and that we could discover what this journey is.

As time passes the inner journey gets clearer, but in this blog I'd like to take a bit of a detour. Some of you will be wondering why the detour is important. Maybe it isn't, but then again, maybe it is. :)

Over the history of humanity two fundamental theories about consciousness have been proposed. Without reciting every development in theology and philosophy (and even physics) we can roughly call these objective and subjective reality. You know what's coming.

Objective reality asserts that there is a reality that is external to our thought and consciousness. We can perceive this reality through our senses and process it with our minds. This external reality exists independent of any of us and would still be here even if we weren't.

Subjective reality asserts that all reality is totally within our thought and that there is nothing outside of our own consciousness. Even those things that now appear external are simply manifestations of our own thought and they are not outside of us. If we wink out, our reality goes with us. There is nothing outside of us to continue on.

Now this may seem very close to a theological blog, but . . .

In an objective reality two journeys are taking place. The external journey of our idea/company with its interactions with the world and the internal journey which is our own personal growth as we learn what to do and how to do it. In this reality both journeys are important and, at any given time, one may be more important than the other.

OTOH, if we really exist in a subjective reality then there isn't any external journey at all! The journey is entirely an inner one. What we experience (what our venture experiences) is totally a product of our own thought. Hence, our venture's journey (the external journey) is identical to our inner journey, how we grow and learn and, more importantly, what we vision out.

So now let's do some odds (because physicists can't stay away from math). In the objective scenario the inner journey is at least half the journey. In the subjective scenario the inner journey is the whole journey.

If we take the fraction of both scenarios we see that the external journey only makes up 1/4 of the journey while the inner journey makes up 3/4 of it.
Let's assume that either scenario (objective or subjective) is equally probable. Then to get things right we should pay more attention to our inner journey because it is, most probably, the important part of the process.

Math whizzes, don't hold me to the probability theory. :)

But, the exercise could tell us that we need to pay much, much more attention to our inner bootstrap journey. If experience is objective, it's at least half the game. If experience is subjective, then it's the whole game.

Alex Cavalli is a physicist, technologist, actor, author, thinker, bootstrapper, speech/life coach and a whole lot of other things that you just don't want to know anything about. He leads the Bootstrap Inner Journey Initiative.

2 comments:

Jon Lebkowsky said...

Alex, I have trouble with the fundamental dualism suggested by your post. I wonder whether the subject/object split suggested by your post isn't a conceptual error, one that is generative of confusion about our real nature, which doesn't seem to me to be inside (or outside) anything. I'm suggesting that "subject" and "object" are illusory constructs.

This reminds me of the swami in the steambath... "We were speaking of belief; beliefs and conditioning. All belief possibly could be said to be the result of some conditioning. Thus, the study of history is simply the study of one belief system deposing another, and so on and so on and so on… A psychologically tested belief of our time is that the central nervous system, which feeds its impulses directly to the brain, conscious and subconscious, is unable to discern between the real, and the vividly imagined experience. If there is a difference, and most of us believe there is -am I being clear? For to examine these concepts requires tremendous energy and discipline. To experience the now, without preconception or beliefs, to allow the unknown to occur and to occur, requires clarity. And where there is clarity there is no choice. And where there is choice, there is misery. And why should anyone listen to me? Why should I speak, since I know nothing?" (Know where I got that?)

runeight said...

Well . . . LOL

I guess the equivalent to the Swami in the Steambath here would be that I should never have written the post and the Bijoy (and the rest of you) shouldn't have started Bootstrap, etc.. :)

Inside and outside are qualities that pertain to a 4D space/time existence. They probably don't have meaning when our true nature is fully understood, because the concepts of "inside" and "outside" really don't have any meaning to something that doesn't exist in space and isn't passing any time.

But, aside from all of this, I rather think that you are suggesting that the Inner Journey is, after all, the most important part of the proces. Maybe even all of it. Because, it's neither inside or outside. It's just The Journey.

Of couse, then the question would be, what is the nature of a Journey that doesn't travel through either time or space?