Intuitively, it has been known since ancient times, and science has been proving it for a long time: everything is made of vibrations. Today, we call the part of these vibrations that we can perceive our reality and the part that we cannot perceive the unknown. From the time of Socrates to the present day, we have heard, read and perhaps contemplated from many thinkers and scholars that what can be known cannot be determined by the sensory and temporal. Yet, in the fast pace of daily life, we can often find ourselves in reactionary cycles created by what is limited by our perceptions and its exhaustion.
Our bodies, which have evolved to perceive as much as they need to, have different sensory organs to receive different types of vibrations and separate departments in our brains to interpret the messages received from each sensory organ. Although these departments are separated from each other in the interpretation process, since the activity in any part of the brain cannot be considered independent of other parts, the reactions are holistic. And if our sensory perception of reality is limited, what are our holistic responses based on?
Scientists talk about the hypothesized patterns that the brain continues to accumulate and master with experience from its earliest developmental times. The inspiration for today’s AI-based machine learning seems to be the brain machine that models patterns and gives birth to life in all its complexity, harmony and potential, from the simplest to the most advanced. The assumptions that the brain uses to be efficient in its adaptation are the basis for the unreliability of the senses at work. For example, we observe that even if we look at a painting very carefully and for a long enough time, the details we can remember afterwards are very few. In fact, as time passes, the memory of that painting mixes with memories of other paintings, and it becomes a painting that remains in our minds, a painting that never existed and exists only in our reality. The brain fills in the gaps for us, continues to write its story according to its patterns.
Everything we experience happens as an electrochemical interpretation in the dark room of our brain, which has never experienced the outside world. Our reactions to these interpretations are comparatively determined by the accumulation of our previous patterns in memory. The reference definitions on which the comparison is based are shaped by the experience of our infancy and childhood. Because as a human species, we need support to survive once we leave the womb. Thus, according to our met and unmet needs, our reactions, our orientations, and in total, our whole life pattern is almost “spontaneously” woven. In this case, I can’t help thinking that perhaps what they mean by fate weaving its web is “an entangled reflection of the story the brain is writing, created by neural pathways?”
In this sense, although the principle of entanglement has been attributed to the subatomic world, there seem to be complex non-linear bonds between us with large mass, which we can perceive as the interplay of our fate pathways or nervous systems. These bonds exist mostly through selves that are formed by the aforementioned assumptions, which do not reflect the whole. Although it is possible to address this entanglement from many perspectives, if we consider it from the perspective of Transactional Analysis, one of the theories that expresses it in its simplest form, it seems possible for a person to become aware of his/her “life position” towards himself/herself, life and others, and then to take responsibility for who he/she is by adding consciousness to the internal dynamics and ways of relating that form these patterns.
Taking responsibility for who we are means setting out with a sustained effort to understand who we are. Think about it; we all have billions of pictures of me in our system, taken from the earliest developmental times of the brain, accumulated one on top of the other and never doubted their existence! The selves that are invited to the stage from time to time with triggers because they are only in the memory, which in fact should have been abolished long ago… The distorted selves that may never have existed, exaggerated or extinguished by social pressures… The selves whose authenticity is not allowed by families because they are different from them… This list goes on and on. Perhaps the question “who am I?” begins with the purification process that the question “who or what am I not?” brings.
I could start this process by exploring what my boundaries are as an authentic me, for example. I can save a lot of energy by determining my sphere of influence on my oppressed ethics. By channeling this energy into organizing my own resources, I can explore what I really enjoy, what is facilitated for me, what finds meaningful expression through me. I can recognize areas where I am affected by the boundary issues of others who have not yet done this research, and I can talk about my needs from a whole new level as an authentic me. I can slow down and ask the question “what does this mean for me?” to get out of the automatic behaviors that machine learning brings out in me. As I become free of my burdens (and selves) I can listen to the voice that whispers to me the reason why I am here.
I know that the authentic self needs courage and that we need to support it today more than ever. While each of our brains, experiences, stories are unique, I see this uniqueness shining through all our patterns like a diamond. I dream that we will cease to be copies of each other, that we will become “individuals” with the unique gifts we have been given, and that we will meet in the unity and oneness of individuality. We need to simplify, slow down and turn our eyes inward rather than outward. After all, there are only vibrations out there, and the interpreter is still in the dark…
Now let us return once again to our sense of sight and imagine waking up one morning, slowly opening our eyes and inviting in the morning light filtering through the windows. Billions of neurons, in a complex symphony-like pattern, bring us the familiar bed we are used to seeing every morning, our spouse, our cat and that very familiar sense of self that is the sum total of all our memories. Being in the body has a warm feeling, like being at home. If we are lucky enough not to be in a hurry, a grateful smile spreads across our faces. In the breath we take, we feel the fullness of the whole universe wrapped up and hidden inside us. And maybe that question is being repeated:
“If I were a stranger, free of all traces of my memory, who would I really want to wake up as?”
