Chapter 1 – Achieve anything

There is a formula, a method, that exists, and with this formula, this method, you can achieve anything you want (that is within the realm of possibility to achieve). Obviously, due to the laws of the universe, there are some things that are out of the realms of possibility for you to achieve, and in such cases there are no methods or formulas you can use to achieve the impossible. For example, no matter how much you may want to sprout wings and fly like a bird, its just not going to happen, but it is within the realms of possibility for you to design some jetpack type device to achieve personal flight. Here there are two important points to consider when setting the goals you want to achieve, 1) the goals need to be realistic, based within the bounds, within the law, of reality, and 2) there can be different ways to get to the end you want, so if it turns out to be impossible to achieve your goals when walking one path, is there another path you can walk down to get to your goal?

Now, while setting goals, planning, being realistic, and work are all important aspects for achieving what you want, and we will talk about this type of stuff later in the book, they are not the formula. To achieve anything you just need two things, and if you can obtain these two things you will achieve whatever it is that you want.

So, the formula to achieve whatever it is that you want is available for the low low price of only 49.99 (plus shipping), sorry, just kidding. Tell you what, all you need to spend for this golden nugget is a little time, do all the social media things you can do to swing the algorithm in our favour, and we will call it even. Deal, Ok, Ok. The formula is actually … summed up as the way and the will. If you are able to, whether through luck or hard work and planing, obtain the way and the will, you will achieve whatever it is you want to achieve. It may be making a cup of tea, getting a promotion at work, or getting through the day, if you want to achieve it you need the way, which is the method, the set of things to do in order to make the thing you want to happen actually happen, this is the way. You also need the will, the drive to actually carry out the way to achieve the cup of tea, the promotion, or making it through the day.

To achieve anything you want you need both the way and the will, its not an either or kinda deal, its a both kinda deal. If someone has the way, but not the will, then while they may hold the knowledge of a method to achieve what they want, they lack the ability to take that knowledge and put it into action. On the other hand, if someone has the will but not the way, they can be driven to action to try to achieve what they want, but without knowledge of the way to do what is needed their efforts will fail to produce the desired result. The formula for achieving is the way AND the will; obtain knowledge of the method for how to achieve what it is you want, and the drive to get out and do it, and you will get it, simple as cause and effect.

This idea can be applied to whatever it is you may want to achieve, literally anything, just think about it, start trying it out, it really is great. Now we could finish this off here, we have given you the secret, all you need to do is follow it and you will be right, can achieve whatever you want…, but wait there is more. Because we are feeling generous we will throw in a good perspective, or roadmap if you will, of how to cultivate and maintain mental health. I hope the more astute of you see where this is going, if you want to achieve anything you need the way and the will, so the rest of this work is going to be about the way and the will to mental health.

It is interesting, when you think about it, that each of us is actually, legit, walking around with a supercomputer; an amazing information processing system imbedded into this fleshy matter/energy processing system we call a body. Yet, as a modern society with all our amazing technology and scientific knowledge about the world, we seem to know so little about the thing that is most common to all of us, the mind. Considering that the mind is associated with literally everything we do, say, or think, it is in no way a stretch to say that mind is the most important thing to any human being. Given this importance, we really ought to have some sort of manual; like when you get a car, or a new cell phone, a little book comes with it that tells you what needs to be done to keep it doing what you want it to do. That is what we need, a handbook for the mind, for mental health, some guide as to what we need to do to keep this information processing thing doing what we need it to be doing for us, and unto others.

We believe that mental health is not a luxury for the rich, that it is a human right, and that the knowledge needed to cultivate and maintain mental health is a basic necessity for modern human beings, as basic as literacy and numeracy. This work is designed to be that handbook, a guide, to help you figure out how best to cultivate and maintain mental health, to spark your drive for self sovereignty. The core of this work is not really new in nature, there is a lot of information about this perspective that has been around for thousands of years, it has just been repackaged with modern ideas and referenced with science. Remember that you are the ultimate authority when it comes to your life, you decide what you bring in close to your self, and you decide what to reject – question… everything… if you dont already question everything then start on this work, and make that mindset default for processing new information. The goal is not rejection of information, it is about you not blindly believing things, it is about you developing and holding an idea of what is good, and then you assessing your experiences as fully as you can, by looking at the information from as many angles as possible, who, what, where, how, and why? (with why last because it is the most fun) – and while you are doing this questioning, assessing the world as you are experiencing it, you are always open to changing the way you process, modifying the way you think, adapting your very self if your tools for exploring reality show you something different to what you had previously believed.

Now, mental health.

To put a fine point on it, Mental health is about human beings making good decisions. The term ‘mental’ refers to our mind, which is part of our information processing system (you will learn a lot about systems here – as system are the best way to view reality), and information processing is the cause of our reactions (with our reactions being the emotional, sensory, language state of mind, and our physical behaviour – we will go over this in more detail later). Making good decisions is producing good reactions, this is how we asses the health, are they bad or good reactions we are producing in our head, or with our body? Making good decisions has a lot to do with our conscious information processing, and the software we have developed to measure the quality of our decisions – the Self. More then this though, because we want to make good decisions in reality, we need to reference the decision making software, the self, with reality.

Taking this into account then, mental health is about how well your Self aligns, is in harmony, balance, or lockstep with, the order inherent to our universe. We are going to introduce a term, Natural Existence, which is a description of the universe without humans, without life, and we will show you the unfolding of natural existence, the solidification of world after world to make up this physical universe, and all this unfolding, this natural existence, is defined in terms of systems. You will be left understanding that all worlds in the unfolding universal existence are defined by systems, and these systems, whatever the layer of existence, be it quantum or physical, all systems are made of individuals that have relationships which are predictable, describable in terms of law. In other words, you will come to embrace that there is an order to natural existence.

You, our species, life, is part of, born of, we feed from, natural existence, I am a human shaped lump of natural existence, so it makes sense that when our information processing becomes detached from the natural world around us we start to get a bit crazy, start making some bad decisions, producing unhealthy sensory, emotional, language contents of mind and behaviour. If we want to make good decisions in reality, we need to have good information about reality, and our dominant human societies have been rather detached from reality for some time now.

We get told of all these various social problems via the news and government, bet you could name some in your head right now… when we consider that all our problems come from the human mind, it is clear that our species only faces one problem, and that is a mental health problem. Ok, so we have identified the problem, we make rubbish decisions, and all of us are responsible for this, as you will come to see, so it is your duty, it is my duty, to put in some effort to make things right. The reason we make poor or bad decisions is because our decisions are not based on a good perspective of reality; whether that stems from a lack of knowledge, ignorance, or overpowering emotional drives and fantasy stories, well, that comes down to your bespoke self, which is grown through experience with other humans and people. The cool thing is that, although we are uniquely our own self, each of us share the common reality that we all witness sensory contents within mind, we all have emotional responses within our body, and we all have our own internal chatter which can be used as an indicator of the nature of our own self. By learning about the common aspects of self, the neural-conceptual structure of the self, you can find ways to manage, to edit, to reprogram, aspects of your self. If you want to learn about the feedback loop of the mind, and are willing to carry out certain practical exercises, you will be able to consciously programme, or shape, your own self for good.

The one thing we are going to have to understand if we want mental health, and this is the one thing that is going to enable different cultures and nations of human beings to get along, and that one thing is a universal measure of quality. If we want mental health (and it should be noted that health is a term of quality, on the scale of bad to good), if we want mental health we need to make good decisions. But, as we are all individual, have different experiences, different emotional responses, we have different ideas of good based on our own self, our own subjective perspective. Until now we have dealt with this problem by following what other humans, or groups, have said, or say, is good. But this is problematic too, we are then just following a larger subjective perspective, and we still have the problem of different groups having different measures of quality – and when large groups fight we get large horrors committed – many atrocities have been committed in the name of good humans.

To move forward, in our personal and social evolution of self, we need to overcome subjective divisions, we need to overcome our ego. But we can overcome this, because we have tools such as science and philosophy, and we can look to the universe itself, at the order that underpins everything, and use that as the basis for our concept of good – we can define a universal measure of quality and use it to make good decisions for our own mental health, and apply the same ideas for our social decision making, for the good health of our society.

So, for our own mental health we want to look beyond the subjective human, the ideologically derived, measures of what is good, to look outward and beyond and learn about the reality we all share, to find an idea of what is good based on the order of natural existence, the universe, itself. While expanding your perspective of the world, the universe, well, expanding your perspective of everything is an important part of self growth, gathering information as its own end though is, in itself, not a good way to cultivate nor maintain mental health. A good path to mental health involves both gathering good information about this existence we all share, and developing the ability for good management, good control of, or precedence over, our own personal, subjective, experiences. You want to learn about the world, but you also want to be able to apply that knowledge in your everyday decision making process… you want a good perspective of reality to shape the foundation of your self, so that your self tends toward making good decisions in reality – what you want is self sovereignty. This is the way and the will for cultivating and maintaining mental health.

Going forward, the coming chapters will start with a few focusing on the way to mental health. one chapter exploring the self and systems of life, one looking at why you want to be a philosopher and the science delusion that is causing a quality crisis (and what we can do to move on). Then we get to the meat of this perspective, we spend a chapter looking at the unfolding of our universal existence, from the initial singularity to now, the unfolding of systems, inherent law, so that we can apply these patterns to define an objective measure of quality, an idea of what is good and bad based on the universe itself. We finish off the first part of this book by spending a chapter exploring a good idea, a good path, to cultivate and maintain mental health; think of it as taking the theory of the previous chapters and putting it into a practical method, something you can put into action and focus on for cultivating and maintaining mental health.

The second part of the book begins by addressing the other side, the yin to the ways yang, so, yes, the will to mental health is feminine in nature. We shall spend a chapter looking at just what will is, and because our will is actually a number of things in specific relationship, we have a modified analogy from the Bhagavad gita so that we can better pictures the parts, how they fit together, and what we can do to get the control of our system that is necessary for self sovereignty. We then spend some time looking at how we can train, or develop will, and just as we work out to develop the strength of our body, we need to work out to develop the strength of our mind (and just like lack of use makes our muscles weak, lack of use makes our mind weak). But we are going to show you that you dont need to take time out of your day especially for mental health training, there are things you can bring into your everyday life, so you are not doing anything extra except for remembering to keep perspective and focus (and there are things you can do to your physical environment, your home, car, work space, to help you remember). The third chapter in the will section of this first book looks at using mindfulness ideas and techniques, blended with knowledge of our information processing system and especially the feedback loop between our brain and mind, to share some ideas of how to identify aspects of your own self, and how to rewire a self that has fallen out of harmony with the order of natural existence, something like how to use language to reprogram your self for good.

The rest of the first book will be thoughts on practical applications, some interesting associated ideas, and a final wrap up of this journey to cultivate and maintain mental health through understanding the Order of Natural Existence. As alluded to, this is the first book of three, so we will provide some insight about the nature of the next book in the final chapter of this one.

Please hold in your mind that this is not a be all and end all work, this is not the final product, with this topic there is no one definitive answer, they are just the best answers we can hold with the information we currently have; as we learn and grow and develop our perspective we may come to see things in a different light, but for now, with what we know, reality looks a certain way. As a consequence, this work will be a kind of living document, and we encourage anyone who wants to put in their 2 cents, or one hundred dollars, or how ever much you want to put in, please feel free to contribute. The first thing you can do for this work is to question everything, please think about the information, get to know it, and try and understand it. If you are unable to reconcile any piece of this work with what you know to be true and good, let us know, describe your perspective, so we can discuss it and, together, evolve our ideas to be one step closer to the Order of Natural Existence.

Chapter 2 – Know Thy Self

A good way to mental health is through knowing ones self.

There are two main ways that one can know thyself. There is the personal, individual self that you are, the you that is you and not anyone else – this is something we will touch on in this chapter, but will really get into later in the book. Then there is the common, the collective self that is the same for you as it is for every other human. This second aspect of the self is what the self actually is. It is the framework, the parts of the body, the brain, and the experiences, that give rise to your own personal, individual, self.

In fact, since the self is an artefact, an emergent property of a biological information processing system, the framework that gives rise to the human self has many aspects in common with not only all animals, but plants, and, in the most general sense, all life too.

The self is best described, from our current perspective, as the software of our information processing system; so to understand the self we need to understand biological processing systems.

All life is a system, from single cells, plants, animals, and us. Every individual that makes up this category of things called life is a processing system. A processing system is a system that receives, processes, and reacts to matter/energy. A system is made up of individual parts that interact, have relationships, in such a way as to create, to define, the system. Everything within this universal existence is, or is part of, a system (and most things are both). Most of the systems within this universal existence, such as atoms, galaxies, and solar systems, are just regular old systems, but, on this planet at least, we find naturally occurring processing systems, and we call them life.

The evolution of life on this planet is the birth and evolution of processing systems, systems that must receive, process, and react to matter/energy in order to maintain their existence, their life. The direction of the evolution of life has, and continues to be, toward greater abilities to receive, process, and react to matter/energy (and recently, in relative terms, information). At the start of the evolution of life we find individual prokaryote cells, then the more complicated Eukaryote cells (the building blocks for all multicellular organisms). Next in the evolution of living processing systems we see a burst of plants, the start of the evolution of the body. Fun fact, what we know of as our emotional responses are the chemical communications between cells within the body as the body is deciding if we should move toward or away from the stimulus that is being received by one or more sense. This most basic, bodily, chemical/emotional information processing mechanism is the same for all bodies, plants and animals alike, although we dont usually call them emotions in plants (as plants lack a brain, and so do not have the capacity to feel the chemical/emotional messages within their body.

The body itself is not a dedicated information processing system, which is why we dont see plants up and walking around town (to move around the world, to have senses as we know them, you need a dedicated information processing system, aka a brain). A body is a matter/energy processing system, it takes in matter/energy, such as water and sunlight (in the case of plants), and process the things it receives in order to produce the reaction of staying alive (begees song???). The information processing that happens within the body is of a very general type, providing general meaning for how the body should react to received matter/energy (meaning to move away from stimuli, what we know as pain, and meaning to move toward a stimuli, what we know as pleasure). So while plants lack the brains to get up and move around the world, the chemical message system of the body enables them basic regulation, and is the underlying mechanism that will evolve to provide emotional meaning in animals.

The next big leap in the evolution of life came through a type of cell called a neuron, and when these cool cats get together, amazing things happen. Neurons stand out from the other, what we could call regular, cells of the body because they form direct relationships, communicate directly, with other neurons (while the cells in the body communicate generally, through sending out chemical messages that float through the body until they bump into cells that happen to have the right receptor for the particular message sent).

We first see loose collections of neurons in organisms such as molluscs and jellyfish, and as this early brain development started in the oceans it makes sense that early sensory development, such as the development of eyes, also happened in the ocean. Remember that the evolution of life is the evolution of processing systems, and the direction of life’s evolution has been toward greater abilities to receive, process, and react – so running parallel with neurons and the evolution of a dedicated information processing system for the body is the evolution of better abilities to receive information (our senses, such as eyes, taste, smell, etc) and the evolution of better abilities for the body to react (limbs, fins, tentacles, and the like).

The evolution of the brain has undergone a few notable stages. First we have the basic brain, the cerebellum, which evolved as the first point of coordination between the body and the outside world. Next we have the limbic system, which evolved to better represent the general, emotional, processing from within the body in brain, or neural form, so as to better relate received sensory information with bodily, emotional, meaning. The last stage of note is the cerebrum, the top part of the brain which is what we usually think of when thinking of a brain. The cerebrum is where sensory information is recreated so that we can witness it within mind, and also has the latest brain technology, the prefrontal lobe, that enables organisms to better see relationships between things, to make connections, a key component in the ability for abstraction, for abstract thought (aka information processing).

The self is best thought of as your informational body, the body of information that you develop through experience. The function of the self is to determine meaning, and, through determining meaning, the self is the cause of your information processing reactions – which are the contents of mind (emotional, sensory, and language) and behaviour. The self is three dimensional, although not in the typical physical sense of having height, width, and length. The three dimensions of the self are the three types of information that make up the self, sensory, emotional, and language.

As we go through life we experience. For a system to experience something it must be able to receive and process the thing, and whenever there is processing there is a reaction (this is as true in a physical body sense, experiencing a cup of coffee, as it is in an information processing sense, experiencing our knowing that we are drinking a cup of coffee). We are experience machines, and our information processing system is continually receiving, processing, and reacting to things. When we receive information into our brain, sensory and emotional information, the brain processes information by creating an internal representation of that information – it is this internal representation that we witness within our mind. Now, the important part here, the contents of our mind are a reaction of our brains processing, but they also function as an input back into our brains processing (to be processed along with the next information received into the brain, generating the next set of contents in our mind). What this creates is a feedback loop, and an aspect of our experience (the experience of the contents of our mind) that is as real to our information processing system as our experience with the external (sensory world) or our internal (emotional) world. So when we say that experience shapes our self, it is both our external experience, and our experience within mind, that shapes our self (and humans often develop such a focus on the contents of mind, especially our thoughts, that this internal experience can be more influential in shaping our self than our external experiences – a negative thing when we need to be in tune with reality, but can be advantages when thrust into negative experiences within the world). We shall talk more about this feedback loop later in the book when discussing practical applications of this perspective, but it is this mechanism that we can exploit for our own self programming goals.

As we experience our brain is relating things together, taking bits of information and creating greater concepts from them. The most basic information processing relationships animals develop are sensory/emotional ties. Remember that the emotional responses within the body are the most basic way for a system to generate meaning (and we need to generate meaning to make decisions on whether to move toward or away from things), so the point of developing sensory/emotional ties is so we can associate emotional meaning with the sensory information we receive, thus tying our own emotional meaning to the things of the world (and we designate the things of the sensory world as repulsive, things to be moved away from, or attractive, things to move towards).

There is an analogy which you will become very familiar with by the end of this book, it comes from the Bhagvad Gita, an ancient book of knowledge from what is now modern day India, and it is called the analogy of the chariot. The analogy is a way for us to imagine how the various parts of our body/brain information processing system come together, how the parts relate, for us to produce reactions (the sensory, emotional, language contents of mind, and behaviour). So imagine the parts involved with operating a chariot. We have the chariot itself, the chariot is pulled along by horses, the horses have reins attached to them, and on the chariot stands a charioteer who holds the reins so as to direct the horses. In this analogy the chariot is our body, our body is pulled along by our emotional responses, which the horses represent. Remember that what we know as our emotional responses are the chemical communication between cells within the body. In order for you to move your body to do anything at all, the cells within the body need to be coordinated, so they need to communicate. You are literally unable to move your body without cellular communication, without emotional responses (and its not that some people don’t have emotional responses, its just that we can develop to be ignorant of what is actually going on within our body). So our emotions are our horses, they are the drive, the force, that pulls the body, the chariot, around.

It should come as no surprise to you that we need to keep our emotions in check, and we do so with a charioteer holding onto reins to direct the horses, to keep them on the right path (preventing them from running off the path and smashing up the chariot). In this analogy the charioteer is wisdom, and the reins are mind, so this means that we need to use wisdom to hold onto mind, and to use mind so as to direct the horses, keeping them on the right path for us. Without wisdom holding onto the reins, holding onto your mind, what happens? Well, without wisdom what happens is that the reins, your mind, is pulled along by the horses, by your developed emotional responses (developed through the sensory and language relationships, the stories, you have built around particular emotional responses through experience). This is something you can recognise when practising techniques such as mindfulness, where you take note of the thoughts that you find running through your mind (especially if you struggle from uncontrolled, or pervasive thoughts). A process for this could include first recognising the types of common thoughts you have, then assess the content of the thoughts, the nature of the stories, and if not immediately apparent, you could look deeper and see the emotional drive that is actually behind the thoughts. As a note of encouragement, if you find yourself in a situation of pervasive or uncontrolled thoughts, please know that they can be overcome through spending time developing wisdom, training your charioteer, to take its rightful place of control in this situation.

We will spend more time later in the book going over practical ideas, tips and techniques, and things such as mindfulness, for now we will finish formulating the perspective from which our practical work will be based.

Human beings are supposed to develop self sovereignty. Sovereignty is supreme power or authority, so each individual human is supposed to develop supreme power or authority over their own self – this is the way. The way that humans do this is through experience. Experience shapes our self, as everything we experience, for bad or good, becomes a part of us. The role of a parent, or caregiver, is to provide good experiences for the child, and limit bad experiences, with the overall goal that the child will develop self sovereignty. It is said that it takes a village, or society, to raise a child – so the same can be said in the social sphere. It is the role of those humans, or institutions, that have the power to shape or define social experiences, to ensure that developing young individuals within society have easy access to the types of experiences that are good at developing self sovereignty, and limited access to the types of experiences that are not good for the development of self sovereignty. In reference to the analogy of the chariot, self sovereignty is a state in which wisdom has been sufficiently developed to drive the system. This doesn’t necessarily mean that wisdom is in active control all the time, rather it means that wisdom has been developed to allow the horses to explore if it is appropriate, but retains the ability to bring the horses back onto the right path if they start pulling the body somewhere that will lead to harm (physical or mental, of self or others). You want to develop enough control, enough will, so that you can let go and follow your emotional drives, but retain the strength (and foresight) to pull back on the reins when your emotional drives are going to cause harm (to self or others).

So how do we develop this wisdom, this will, so that we would be in control of our information processing system? Well, the key is found within our conceptual development – the evolution of self beyond our sensory/emotional ties, too add language, a third dimension, to the sensory/emotional packets of related information, and then go further with language and our ability to make connections to full on abstraction rooted in reality, a measured good.

Before we leave our mothers womb we are already making sensory/emotional connections (and as, while in the womb, we are connected to our mothers emotional system, her emotional responses to the sights and sounds we hear shape our initial emotional/sensory relationships). Once born, and our senses fully come online, we quickly organise the sensory world in terms of our emotional, pleasure/pain, responses. In doing so we are identifying individual things of the world by their sensory data, the sight, smell, sound, touch and taste of things (which is why babies want to touch and taste everything, they are building up a sensory information profile about the individual things they encounter). And they are assigning an emotional meaning to the packets of sensory information they receive, are they repulsive (cause pain, unpleasant feelings making us want to move away from it) or attractive (cause pleasure, pleasant feelings making us want to move toward it).

Onto these developing sensory/emotional packets of information we quickly start adding the third dimension, language. You all have a fair idea with how this progresses. We start with names, ball, cat, car, etc – associating the sound of the name with the sensory/emotional packet we have already developed. Language is critical for abstraction, because language is an abstraction in itself, in that the name of something, say the word cat, is an abstraction of the cats in the real world that we come to know through our senses. Not only can language represent sensory objects, it can also represent emotional objects, just as we first start learning the names of sensory objects, we also start learning the name of emotional objects, such as pain, pleasure, hungry, full, tired, awake, etc.

While our introduction to language begins with names, we quickly learn that with language we can describe relationships between things, and this is where our power for abstraction starts to take off. Our brain, our information processing system, works by making connections between things. As we learn language we start organising our sensory/emotional world by way of stories, and so it is, as we get older, the substance of our self develops as a web of stories, a map of relationships.

Abstraction is a double edge sword for our species. On the one hand abstraction is a powerful tool for seeing deeper into the reality that is beyond our immediate senses, such as gravity or the laws of thermodynamics. But, on the other hand, our ability for abstraction, if we do not take the time, or effort, to ensure a grounding in reality, can spiral into fantasy.

Unfortunately our species is suffering from the second situation when it comes to our social governance and organisation, we have neglected to ensure that our social abstractions are grounded in reality, and we have an increasing mental illness problem that is caused by humans being born and operating within a system that has long lost touch with what is good. But lets not think too much about our social problems just now, there will be time for that later, we need to sort our own individual issues out first before we address society.

The development of self sovereignty is the development of a conceptual, language abstracted, perspective of existence that does, indeed, faithfully represent reality. The whole point of our information processing system is to make decisions for our movements within reality, and to do this we need good, accurate, information about reality. If the ideas, beliefs, and stories that we develop are more fantasy then reality, how are we supposed to make good decisions in reality – we cant.

As a child, we start developing our sensory/emotional/language conceptual framework, aka the self, before we can develop actual wisdom, our conscious or conceptual will. The root cause for our reactions (the contents of mind and behaviour) is our bodily, emotional, responses – a state where the horses are driving the system, where cognitive, or relationship and language processing of the brain, is slave to emotions. With little to no input from the conceptual framework that develops into wisdom, the individual has an information processing system dominated by Ego. The Ego is a stage that all humans go through, but must be viewed as such, a stage in our cognitive development, something to be worked through, to evolve or develop out from.

To progress beyond the base ego, to what could be described as a super ego, the individual needs experiences to evolve where the cause for their reactions (contents of mind and behaviour) comes from. This is a process of evolving will, from ones infantile and base emotional drives to find the cause of our reactions stemming from our developed higher emotional/conceptual drives. This is a process of evolving your processing system so that instead of reactions being driven by base emotional responses such as the pursuit of immediate pleasure gratification, to a state where the contents of your mind and behaviours are more driven by higher emotional/conceptual drives (such as love, or benevolence, compassion, understanding, empathy, creativity, etc).

Another way of describing this personal evolution, from a child that needs to be governed by the authority of others to a mature human being with self sovereignty, is through the evolution of the concept of self. At the Ego side of the spectrum, where direction of the chariot is determined by the horses, the individual considers the self to be their own personal, physical body. As the individual grows, conceptually, cognitively, so too does their concept of self, we start to consider others, such as our immediate family or close friends as being essentially the same as our own personal self – in that we would consider the impact of our behaviour on them as much as we would consider the impact of our behaviour on our own personal self. We choose a partner to spend our life with, to raise a family with, and we extend our concept of self to them and our children. With more enlightenment, more conceptual development, we start to extend the concept of self to include members of our immediate community, and there is no reason why we cannot extend this concept of self further to include all of humanity, or even all of life. In this idea we find that being selfish is not necessarily a bad thing, it all depends on how far we are able to extend our concept of self. Acting selfish when you consider the self to be your own personal body can be thought of as bad, yes, although acting selfish when you are including all life in your concept of self can be thought of as a good thing (its all a matter of perspective).

This personal evolution we speak of, from child to self sovereign, from Ego to Super Ego, from a chariot at the mercy of the horses to a chariot in the charge of wisdom, is the path to mental health, it is the way. We are a product of our experiences, so if we want to cultivate and maintain mental health we need to fill our life with experiences that are good for cultivating and maintaining mental health. While our conceptual, our information processing, development is generally assisted through learning about the world, its things, and the laws that govern relationships, nothing is as good for mental health as language development. We shall talk about this idea later, but the general gist is that if you want to program a computer then you use a computer language, and if you want to programme a human you use a human language. As an information processing system our software, the self, is a complex web of stories with sensory, emotional, and language dimensions; and at the core of our information processing, whether we explicitly recognise it or not, is the concept of good.
At the end of the day all humans want to do what is good for the self, even humans who do evil and despicable things want to do and be good, its just that their idea of what is good, their measure of quality, is distorted form how other humans would measure quality. When we talk of mental health, we need to specifically define what is good. This is because while the mental aspect refers to our information processing system, our decision making (that which produces our reactions, the contents of mind and behaviour), the health aspect is a measure of quality, and quality is measured in terms of bad and good. From this perspective, mental health is therefore simply found within an information processing system that is producing good reactions, good sensory, emotional, and language contents of mind, and good behaviours. While mental illness is found within an information processing system that is producing bad reactions, bad sensory, emotional, and language contents of mind, and bad behaviours.

Now we are at a point in our exploration of the way to mental health that rests on the definition of the word good. So we shall end this chapter here, pause, reflect, and we will meet back next time when we explore the quality crisis and the science delusion, why you want to be a philosopher.

Chapter 3 – The Quality crisis and the science delusion (why you want to be a philosopher)

The quality crisis occurs as our species, the individuals that make up our species, struggle to evolve individual subjective ideas and beliefs to a greater, objective, universal, perspective.

The quality crisis is the cause for all conflict. All disagreements, all fighting, and all war, they all boil down to a difference of quality, they all stem from different ideas of what is good and bad. If there were no difference in the measure of quality, if the two parties making a decision about some land or resource operated with the same understanding of what good and bad is, there would be no conflict.

Our species needs a universal measure of quality, an idea of good that is based on something beyond our own subjective beliefs, a universal good. And we should have it; we have enough information as a species, and when you consider some of the most basic information we have held for or a long time, makes you wonder why reality is a perspective not common knowledge today.

To get to our destination we need more then science, while science is an amazing tool, it would appear by slogans such as ‘trust the science’, and the ‘science is settled’, that the general public understanding of what science actually is, and how it is put into practice in the modern world, does not match reality. Science is a methodology, its full name is, after all, the scientific method. Science is a set of steps, a formula, for generating information – it does not makes predictions, it does not interpret information, or draw conclusions – a scientist does these things.

To consider what science is, it helps to know about where it came from. Science is the child of philosophy. Once upon a time, for a long time in our species history actually, all we had was what we would now call philosophy (which is, literally translated, the love of wisdom – and as we are ultimately after mental health, loving wisdom is something we really want to get into). What we call science today evolved out of philosophy, and every scientist true to their craft practices philosophy when postulating why, designing experiments to try, and drawing conclusions from the data generated. Unfortunately for science, the modern world is a corporate world, and the ability to do science is bound with the ability to get funding, and then there is what we actually hear of the science being done. The sad reality is that what we generally hear about is not the science, to hear about the science would be reading the actual scientific paper, and that does not make for very exciting news, doest ‘get the clicks’. What we hear about, in the media, in reports and analyses of things that involve science, is the interpretation of the data generated by the scientific method, and interpretation is a matter of philosophy.

Science doesnt exist without philosophy, without the love of wisdom. Many humans have this idea that philosophy is just a bunch of old white men sitting around talking all day, while this can actually be the case, it is certainly not the only case. The literal translation of the word philosophy, from the Greek it originated, is the love of wisdom, and you dont need to be an old white man to love wisdom. In fact, when you consider that wisdom is best thought of as the ability to make good decisions, and core to the development and maintenance of mental health is the ability to make good decisions, you realise that philosophy is something you really need to cultivate as an essential part of your self.

The science delusion that our modern world is under stems from a disconnection between science and philosophy, a disconnection caused by monetary interests usurping the direction and interpretation of the scientific method. Just look at the way the majority of science is practised within the modern world. Gone are the days of the scientific pursuit being driven by human curiosity, by our desire to understand more about the reality we exist within, by the love of wisdom. Now days, science is more likely to be practised as a means to the end of making money. This not to say that all scientists corrupt their work for money, or due to blackmail, no, most scientist do earnestly have some philosophical curiosity about reality. What we are saying is that at the end of the day, the funding for modern science usually comes from some corporation (be it public or private), the scientist doing the experiments and making the conclusions is a paid employee, and corporations are mandated by law to make money, to turn a profit. In this environment the choice, or direction, of science is heavily influenced by money (at least, the influence of money is often more so than philosophy), and the interpretation of data also, within this environment, is susceptible to the influence of money. Even within our universities, supposedly a place of pure intellectual pursuit, these institutions are operating within the modern economic framework, and as such depend on private corporations for a lot of research funding. We may like to think that funding considerations are of little importance when budding scientists choose what thesis to do, what direction their scientific exploration should take, but the fact is that in this modern world considerations of money play a large role in deciding what scientific exploration will take place.

When you combine a scientific method being practised within a system designed to produce very certain types of results, and a reporting climate that is more focused on emotive opinion than facts and wisdom, it is hardly surprising we see and hear examples of the science delusion. Statements such as “the science is settled”, or “listen to the science” demonstrate an inability to distinguish between science (the methodology) and the scientist (the philosopher or paid employee). A good way past this issue of delusion, and a generally good way to approach things, is for you, the receiver, or consumer, of information to consciously participate with the information streams you are bathing in. What is the scientific study that is being referenced? How have they framed the questions of their experiment or study, what are they looking for? What did they do to get the raw data, how did they do the experiment or study? And are their conclusions reasonable given the questions they asked and the data they collected, or, is there another way to look at the situation?

What this all boils down to is that it really is in your best interests to be a philosopher (especially in this modern information age). To be a philosopher is to love wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to make good decisions, to produce good reactions (good emotional, sensory, language contents of mind, and good behaviours). In a basic reference sense, wisdom can be looked at as involving two main aspects. One aspect to wisdom includes general knowledge about the world, its things, and their relationships. The other main aspect to wisdom includes the ability to know when ones own knowledge of a topic being decided upon is incomplete, or lacking, and having the drive to seek out a fuller pool of knowledge with which to make your decision. When considering these two aspects of wisdom, we can say that a philosopher is anyone who seeks to develop their knowledge about the world so as to continually improve decision making. Philosophy, being a philosopher, is not some elite thing done by academics in ivory towers, no, philosophy is open to all who want to better themselves, to all who actually want to think about the world, its things and relationships, and make good decisions for themselves, their family, friends, society, etc.

As a slight side point, part of the general category of knowledge about the world includes knowledge of how we actually generate knowledge, what makes things true or false. This includes learning about such, what we could call, typically philosophic ideas as logic, how to make an argument, and what logical fallacies area (this general knowledge also includes learning about what the scientific method actually is). Lastly, and possibly most important for your philosophic development, is the general development of language abilities – including generally developing your vocabulary and developing a full understanding of the meanings of words (especially their etymological roots, what their original meaning of words are, and how that meaning has changed over time and cultures). As mentioned previously, language is rather important when it comes to programming your self, so we shall spend more time on these ideas in later chapters.

So, mental health essentially comes down to the ability to make good decisions, and wisdom IS the ability to make good decisions. Also, philosophy is the love of wisdom, the love of gathering knowledge and developing the self so you can make good decisions. For this reason, if you want to walk a path to develop and maintain mental health, you really want to be a philosopher, you want to love wisdom, love gathering knowledge and developing the self so you can produce good emotional, sensory, and language contents of mind, and good behaviours.

Now, we shall circle back to the quality crisis, and what we are going to do to solve this rather fundamental issue. The science delusion that our modern world is under stems from a disconnection between science and philosophy; basically (and metaphorically) locking the love of wisdom up in the back room while its child is left to run unrestrained by parental guidelines (within a world in which direction is largely determined by the dollar). You see, we need philosophy as much as science because while science is really good as quantifying the world, at counting and measuring the things of existence and their relationships, it is unable to tell us anything about quality. Science, as a methodology, is unable to define a universal measure of quality, is incapable of telling us what is bad or good, but it can help us collect data that we can use to prove, or disprove, our philosophic suppositions about the world, its things, and their relationships.

We have a lot of growing up do to, as individuals and as a species, and one area that we need to grow, to develop, is our perspective. When we are a young child our perspective is very subjective, in that our ideas of quality are initially drawn from our own emotional responses, so things that bring us pain or discomfort are categorised as bad, and things that bring us pleasure or comfort are thought of as good. As we grow up we learn to become more objective, our perspective starts to take into account others view of the world, or at least, how others may feel, and what others may think. We become more objective as the object of our world view increases, as we consider greater systems, greater concepts, in our operating perspective. We move from pain and pleasure as our drive away from or toward things, to the concepts of bad and good as underpinning our strength of will.

While individuals naturally expand their perspective to objectively take into account larger groups, such as family, friends, and community, we, in general as a species, are still struggling to open our perspective to where it should rationally be. As mentioned at the start of this chapter, the reason for all conflict, all disagreement, all war, is a difference in a measure of quality, and this comes from us hanging on to our own subjective views of the world, at the very least refusing to open our perspective to take into account the perspectives of the other humans we are interacting with. The only logical way to move forward, to stop being such idiots in our relationships with other humans (and life in general), is to figure out and adopt in our personal, and social, decision making process, a universal measure of quality.

So please join us for the next chapter where we use philosophy and science to work out a measure of quality, a concept of what is bad and good, based on the universe itself.

Chapter 4 – A Universal Measure of Quality

We are looking for a measure of quality, a rule for guiding what is bad or good, do we humans have anything that looks like that? Of course we do. We all live in a society, a nation, that has rules and laws which prescribe what bad and good behaviour is. Along with our legally defined rules, we humans have ideas of morality and social norms; we may or may not consciously consider these things, but our experience, or lack of experience, with them still play a role in shaping our reactions (sensory, emotional, language contents of mind, and behaviours). The trouble with our social laws and morality is that, in general, the way we use them, define them, as a measure of quality is tainted by subjective human beliefs, giving us variance in national laws, social norms, and ideas of morality between different populations of humans who have been raised with different experiences.

If we want to get to a universal measure of quality we need to take humans out of the picture, not in some grotesque way, but rather in a way where we use an image of the universe exactly the same as it is today, just without any humans, or better life in general, ever evolving. We are looking for an objective measure of quality, a view of reality that is greater than our varying subjective beliefs, so the best way to have a perspective that is greater than any individual, group, or nation, is to just take our species out of the picture, and look at the reality which enables humans to exist, i.e look at the bigger picture. And since humanity is just one of the many species of life, and making a division within life would not really be appropriate, we may as well just view the universe as it is, as it was, before life began its journey. To do this we will use the idea of Natural Existence, this is just existence as it is, as it was, quanta, atoms, elements and compounds, stars and planets, unfolding from the beginning to today, just without life.

So we are searching for some sort of rule, or law, with which to base our ideas of bad and good, and we are wanting to source this rule or law from natural existence, the universe, itself. Hmmmmmm, are there any rules or laws that we can see within our natural existence? Yes, of course there are, we find plenty of rules or laws within our natural existence, such as those to do with motion, with thermodynamics, or that govern quantum systems. We mentioned at the start of this chapter that our social rules are prescriptive, they prescribe the types of relationships that are bad and good. On the other hand, the rules or laws of our natural existence are descriptive, they describe predictable, repeatable, relationships between things. If things are predictable, repeatable, it is because there is some order to them, and so the fact that we are able to define rules or laws to describe the repeatable, predictable, relationships between things of natural existence, points to the idea that, when you get down to it, our universe has an inherent order to it (and that what we call chaos, is just a state, or system, we have yet to see the order underpinning it).

As we look through the various branches of science we can see many descriptions of the order of natural existence expressed as theories, principles, rules, or laws; we see the order of natural existence in chemistry relationships, we see order describing electrical relationships, order in biological relationships, physical relationships, and so on. We know that order, some form of rule, law, or principle, determines relationships between things of natural existence, and relationships between things determines systems. And we know that the universe unfolded, evolved, from the big bang, the singularity, until now… so why not look at order in evolutionary terms, through tracing the evolution of systems, to see what we can say about an underlying order, a common thread to the way order is expressed throughout natural existence. I mean, tracing the evolution of biological systems worked well with developing perspective of information processing systems, so why not trace the evolution of systems right back to the start? This would be a true universal perspective, fit for a universal measure.

In the beginning (as we know it) “the whole universe was in a hot dense state”. The stuff of existence is matter/energy, and in the beginning the matter/energy stuff was polarised, heated up, to the energy side of the spectrum. The unfolding of the universe, at least in the initial phase, was essentially a cooling period, the hot dense energy cooled, and as it cooled matter started to form. As the stuff of existence, this matter/energy stuff, cooled a stratification of existence happened, resulting in various distinct worlds, or layers, to our natural existence (each world more matter, more solid, than the last) – looking back, the first layer we see form is the quantum world, then the atomic world, after that we find the elemental and compound layer, and then our most familiar layer, the physical world. Remember, we are exploring systems, and so it is that the layers of natural existence are determined by their systems – and as systems are made of individuals (things) having relationships, each layer of natural existence is determined by the individuals that make it up, and their relationships (which are predictable, describable by some form of order).

When looking back to the start of the universe the first individual things we can see are called quanta. These things really are more energy than matter, but they are the first distinctly individual things that we can detect. The individual quanta have relationships with other quanta, and those relationships are predictable, describable in terms of law or order, and this first layer of natural existence we can call the quantum world. The nature of the relationships between quanta is binary, either repulsive (where the quanta push each other away), or attractive (where they pull each other together) – this is the nature of all relationships. It is also so that certain quanta have certain types of relationships to the overall effect of creating systems greater than the individual quanta alone. So this first layer we identify in the cooling, the stratification of natural existence, is the quantum world, where individual quanta have relationships, predictable, describable in terms of order, to produce greater quantum systems. The next layer to form in the solidification of natural existence is the atomic layer.

So how does the quantum world relate to the atomic world, well, this is the pattern to the unfolding of natural existence – individuals have relationships which are predictable, describable in terms of order, the overall effect of the individuals and their relationships is the creation of greater systems, THEN, these greater systems become the individuals of the next layer of existence, to have relationships and produce even greater systems, that become the individuals in the next layer of natural existence to unfold during the cooling period. Within the quantum world quanta have relationships, and enough quanta have certain relationships to create greater quantum systems, and these quantum systems are sub-atomic particles, the individual things of the atomic layer. As per the underlying pattern, the individual things of the atomic layer, the sub-atomic particles such as electrons and neutrons, they have relationships that are predictable, describable in terms of order, with the result being the creation of greater atomic systems.

Following this pattern on, individual atoms are then the individual things of the next layer of existence, what we can call the elemental (and compound) strata. When individual atoms have relationships, when atoms bond together, they form elements or compounds – when atoms of the same type group together we get elements, such as lead, or gold, or sulphur, and when atoms of different types have certain relationships we get compounds (such as carbon dioxide or h2o). Following the pattern on, the elements and compounds that are created when atoms bond together become the individuals in the next layer of natural existence, our most familiar world, the physical.

Now this pattern, of individuals having relationships and forming greater wholes, is evident throughout the universe, both within the unfolding of natural existence from a hot dense energy state to a cooled matter state, and within the evolution of living processing systems. Each layer of existence has its own individuals, individuals within each layer have relationships that are predictable, describable in terms of order, and the overall result of individuals having relationships within a particular layer is greater systems (systems that are greater than the individuals alone – and which become the individuals within the next layer of existence). What we see is that the unfolding, the evolution, of our universe has occurred through individuals having relationships in such a way as to create greater systems than the individual alone, and underpinning the relationships that create greater systems are patterns we express as law, descriptions of the order of natural existence.

So lets bring this back to our main quest, to define a universal measure of quality, to find an idea of what is good based on the order of natural existence. Well, to this end we must consider that the universe, natural existence itself, is good – if we want a measure of quality based on natural existence, then it is natural existence itself we are measuring against in our determination of what is good. This is to say that good is the order of natural existence, good is found within the law that underpins this binary playground we find ourselves within. Humans have developed the ability for functional free will, we have the ability, through our decisions, to live within the bounds of the order of natural existence, or to not live within the bounds of the order of natural existence, one way is living good, the other is not. When we live our lives embracing and using the order of natural existence we can live our best lives, when we live our lives fighting, ignoring, the order of natural existence, we find pain, anguish, fear, and other repulsive emotional concepts.

Our universal measure of quality, our universal good, is found within the pattern underlying all fractal worlds of existence (both natural and living) – the repeating pattern of individuals having relationships in such a way so as to create greater wholes. Humans having relationships to make functional families, to develop communities, to create a united species, this is what is universally good; humans having relationships to prevent or destroy, the function of families, of communities, or a united species, this is universally bad.

If we are to express the universal good, this most essential good for human governance, in terms of LAW, it can be expressed in the following simple statement:

“DO NOT STEAL, LIFE, LIBERTY, PROPERTY, THAT’S THE LAW”

We started our journy with the idea that a good way to mental health is through knowing your self. We looked at how you are a processing system, all life is a processing system, and as a processing system you have two main parts, a physical (body) processing system (with its inbuilt emotional information processing system), and a true, dedicated, neuron based information processing system (the brain). While we have a physical self, the self of who we are is an information self, it is made of the three dimensions of sensory, emotional, and language information – but, as we are great at language and abstraction, our self is highly conceptual (and, given dominant social experiences, highly emotional also, a volatile combination really). We looked at the analogy of the chariot, as a way of visualising the various aspects at play within our overall system. How each human, to cultivate and maintain mental health, must evolve their self, their ego, their processing system, from being directed by the horses, from slavery to our base emotional/conceptual programming, to a state of super ego, of higher cognitive and emotional conceptual programming, where wisdom holds onto, and directs, the mind, guided by a universal measure of quality. For wisdom to preside in our decision making process we need to have a measure of quality, and to ensure we make good decisions within this universe, we need a universal measure of quality. Which brings us to this chapter, where we uncover the order of natural existence as the underlying pattern common to all laws, rules, theories that describe relationships between individuals, and we use this underlying pattern, the order of natural existence, as a basis for our universal measure of quality. Doing this we find that good are the relationships that create, promote, or maintain greater systems, while bad are relationships that consume, retard, or destroy greater systems. In terms of a LAW to govern human relationships, to prescribe human behaviour, we can express the order of natural existence as “do not steal, life, liberty, property, that’s the LAW”.

Up until now we have been looking at the way to mental health from a more theoretical perspective (which is a necessary foundation for what is to come), we will spend the next chapter exploring a practical idea as a way to mental health, before moving onto the will of mental health.

Chapter 5 – Regulating The Quality and Quantity of Consumption and Creation

If there is one practice you would do, would bring into your life, to have the most impact on your ability to cultivate and maintain mental health, the practice to embrace is regulating the quality and quantity of your consumption and creation. This is a simple idea, and one that can be equally applied to both physical health and mental health.

A living system receives, processes, and reacts. In order to stay alive the system needs to receive certain qualities of things in certain quantities, and there are certain qualities of things the system could possibly receive that in certain quantities are detrimental to the system (causing sickness or death in the worst cases). We know that quality refers to things that are bad or good, and quantity refers to how much of these bad/good things the system is consuming. With the physical body, our physical health, we regulate the quality of the things we are putting into our body, and the quantity, how much of these bad or good things we are consuming. Our system receives, processes, and reacts; the things we receive into the system are what we consume, and our reactions are the things we create. When we consider our physical body, its creations include the maintenance of life, movement around the world, and waste products.

The order of natural existence is such that systems find a balance, a harmony, in the relationships between the parts that make up the whole, this is good, this is the health that we measure our system against. If a system falls out of balance, the relationships between the parts become strained, the system finds itself out of ease – or dis-eased. The balance of processing systems, the systems of life, is a balance between consumption and creation. We should all know by now that for physical health we do more then just control the quality and quantity of our consumption, we also balance our consumption with our creation. For humans, apart from the basic maintenance of life, the major creation of our body is moving us around the world and doing all the activities we need and like to do. Our most general consideration here is balancing the food and drink we consume with the moving around and doing of things we actually do – too little food/drink consumption for our moving around and our body becomes undernourished, depleted, out of balance, while too much food/drink consumption for our moving around and the body becomes fat, lazy, out of balance. This is why a way to physical health involves managing the quality and quantity of what you receive into your body, managing the quality and quantity of what you do with your body, and ensuring a balance between the two.

Our information processing system, our mental system, is similar to our physical system; both are systems that receive, process, react, both systems have a natural balance, based on the relationships between the parts, that is considered healthy, and when the balance of relationships start to shift from its natural order, both systems can suffer dis-ease. In terms of mental health, the health of our information processing system, what it is we receive and process, is information; sensory, emotional, language information. And our reactions are the sensory, emotional, and language contents of mind, and our behaviour. The interesting thing about the contents of our mind, is that they are both reactions from the brains neural processing, and they are inputs back into our brains neural processing. This creates a feedback loop within your system.

If you look at your bodily system, from an outside perspective, you see a system that receives matter/energy (information) into it, and then you see physical reactions, behaviour. With the physical system it is just straight through, receive, process, react, you eat food, it is processed through your digestive tract, you poo out the waste. With the information processing system there is this middle part, the information comes in, but it doesn’t go straight through to behaviour, no, the sensory, emotional, language information that is received into the brain is represented in neural form, presented for you to witness in mind. Well, this is not entirely true, as many of you will be thinking, sensory information can go straight though to shape behaviour, like with animals that have some brain development but no cerebral cortex (where the sensory information is processed by the cerebellum for emotional and behaviour reactions). This is true for humans too, but we must hold the opinion that humans are not reptiles, and when we ARE operating on the same brain level as reptiles we are operating on what most will know as a ‘fight or flight’ level.

Human beings have a great ability to make connections, a great ability for language, and we have access to mind, to the feedback loop of consciousness, the only reason we should be operating on a fight or flight level is when facing immediate trouble, like in the middle of a car crash. In reality though, most humans, most of the time, should be operating at a higher level of consciousness than reptiles, we should be operating at the level of the feedback loop.

The key aspect of our feedback loop is our attention, like a flashlight that shows importance to a particular spot of the contents of mind. What we pay attention to within mind is what we deem most important, so that information we pay attention to carries the most weight in processing for the next pulse of contents within mind. As our experience within mind is more impactful on our processing system, on shaping our self, than our experience within the sensory world, and as the objects of our attention within mind are given most importance, most weight, in our information processing, controlling our attention is critical for controlling our experience within mind and programming our self. Controlling attention is a matter of will, and we shall cover the will to mental health over the next three chapters.

This first part of the book explores the way to mental health, we spent a bit of time developing perspective, because if we want to make our way to a destination it helps to know the terrain we will be travelling over, what the lye of the land is, so to speak. With this chapter, which is based on our prior work, we are looking at a good practice that can be done to cultivate and maintain mental health. In this light, what does regulating the quality and quantity of our consumption and creation look like? It looks like assessing the information being received into your system for its goodness, making sure (as much as you can) that you are receiving in more good things than bad. It involves paying attention to the contents of mind, ensuring that your inner world, and thought, is full of good sensory/emotional/language content, and that bad content is limited. And you are monitoring behaviour, again, if you are struggling with what is good behaviour, just look to the order of natural existence for a universal measure of quality.

Mental health is known, is expressed, through the production of good reactions, good emotional/sensory/language contents of mind and behaviour. To produce good reactions you need good processing, and good processing results from good inputs into the system; and good inputs are experiences that develop good sensory/emotional/language concepts, good stories about yourself, your own innate connection to the universe, its power, and a good perspective of your place and part within multiple systems, from the quantum, to the universal and everything in between – especially those other living systems, such as family, community, and species.

It is hoped that you get the gist of what regulating the quality and quantity of your consumption and creation means here. There will be no more detailed examples of actual things you can do within your life based off this general practice, as part of the point is for you to take this framework of an idea and flesh it out how it suits you, based on your own life experiences. Because even though we may all want to go to the same general destination, where we are right now is due to everything we have gone through in the past, and how we have dealt with what we have gone through, until now, so we are all starting our journey to the same place from different current locations. The only human who can really do something effective for your mental health is you, the best anyone else can do is provide signposts, guides, a general map – it is up to you to figure out where you are on this map, and it is for you to work out the best path for you to get from where you are now to where you want to be.

Chapter 6 – Will – what it is

Put simply, will is the cause of your reactions, the cause of your sensory, emotional, language content of mind, and behaviour. Everything you do, all the contents of your mind, are the product of your will, whether that be your subconscious will, or your conscious intent. I suppose the whole point of this, the specific direction of growth for humans is, evolving consciousness from the basic level of animals or even small children, to one where thoughts and behaviour are carried out with mind being held by wisdom. This is not to say that we are trying to be robots, always consciously switched on, rather, its about developing both the subconscious and the conscious aspects of our decision making so that we are able to let go of conscious control of our life and allow the subconscious to play, but we have trained our horses well, and we have the ability to pull up the reins when we see things starting to go wrong.

Ok, so this is a rather general description of will, but it is necessary because at the end of the day, whether it be subconscious or conscious, your will is yours; your reactions, the contents of your mind and your behaviours, are yours alone, and you hold 100% responsibility for them. Will is the cause of your reactions, the contents you witness in mind and your behaviour.

From the general statement that will is the cause of your reactions, we can break it down further into two major aspects to our will, which are best illustrated with the, now familiar to you, analogy of the chariot. We have the horses, representing our bodily emotional drives, which are by nature binary; repulsive and attractive. Our emotional response become tied to sensory information through experience, and these emotional/sensory relationships becomes the drive for us to move away from things, or toward things, of the sensory world. When our horses, the bodily aspect of our will, drives our cognitive processing, our mind is pulled along by emotional responses; our reactions, our thoughts and behaviours, are that of our ego, however it has developed through our experiences (some more repulsive, others more attractive).

The development of the charioteer, of Wisdom holding onto mind, the reins, is more then just developing analytical, rational, processing – because our analytical and rational thought can still be driven by our emotional responses, in as simply as our desires determining the object to be analysed. The development of our Self is seen in a shift in how quality is assessed. From a child where “good” and “bad” are based on our own pleasure, toward maturity where “good” and “bad are assessed with a greater conceptual measure (such as the inherent order of the universe). This evolution of ego can also be seen in our very concept of “Self”. Where we evolve from an idea that is rooted in our physical body/brain system, to an idea that is enlarged to consider family members as we would our self. This conceptual growth of the concept of “Self”, of your Self, can be pushed further to include friends, other community members, even further still to consider all humans, or life in general, as we would consider our self. This evolution is for a single purpose, so that our species can operate as one united system, a systems of individuals (and society) crafted for achieving Self sovereignty. Remember the pattern of universal evolution, the evolution of systems, and apply that to humanity, this is the way.

The evolution of the Self, is the evolution of will, it is the evolution of the cause of behaviour, which is the evolution of processing systems (this is the evolution of life). This evolution occurs when humans have free access to experiences, situations, and ideas that extend our concept of good, when we have experiences that enable us to develop attractive emotional/conceptual processing, such as that which we recognise as benevolence, compassion, peace, joy, creativity, and love. Self evolution is retarded when humans are placed in situations that cause them to have experiences stimulating the development of repulsive emotional/conceptual processing, such as greed (for money, possessions, drugs, sex, etc), anger, anxiety, depression, boredom, and fear. We can navigate through the human world we find ourselves in, choosing to promote our attractive Self evolution, through controlling the quality and quantity of our consumption and creation (see the previous chapter for more of this idea).

Our mental health has to do with the quality of our decisions in reality. If we grow up to be disconnected from reality, not knowing basic things about this world, like where food comes from, how we impact the planet, or the potential for creation that you hold within, then it becomes hard for us to make good decisions, and we develop a lack of ease, a dis-ease, in our mind, our information processing system. The more our information processing, our Self, develops in line with reality, the more we consciously embrace the Order of Natural Existence, the more likely we are to make good decisions, the greater our peace, contentedness, and happiness, which are markers for mental health.

It may not have escaped you that the will and the way are a bundle, like yang and yin, and so much of our understanding of will comes in the way it is expressed, or the way it is developed. When you get down to it the real core of will, of our conscious, wise, will, is found in our focus, our ability to direct not only senses like eyes and ears, but to direct the mind in its creation. Because of this, one of the best things you can do for the development of mental health is strengthen your ability to focus, to control, what is going on in your own mind. If you want a strong body you do exercises for bodily strength, such as weight lifting, etc, and if you want a strong mind you do exercises for mental strength, and meditation is basically like weight lifting for the mind.

Our next chapter will explore the practice of meditation as an exercise for the cultivation and maintenance of mental health.

Chapter 7 – Meditation – exercise to strengthen the charioteer

If we want to develop, to strengthen, our physical body then we train it, we work it out. The same is true for our informational body, the Self; if we want to strengthen, to develop, the Self then we need to train it, work it out.

We have different parts that make up our overall physical body, and we train these parts individually, sometimes focusing on our arms, sometimes on our core, other times our legs, but making sure we get all the parts in a relative cycle. The same is true of our informational body, it is made of various parts that can be trained individually; it is best when the parts are all developed in unison.

While there are various aspects at play in our information processing system, from our perspective, it all comes down to our ability to manage, to govern, the contents of our mind (and our behaviour). If we want any of the markers of mental health, peace, happiness, making good decisions, finding joy and seeing the beauty of life, of existence, then our information processing system needs to be set up for this. To this end, without a doubt, the best exercise, the best practice you can bring into your life, is meditation.

What is meditation.

Meditation is best thought of as weightlifting for the mind, or, more specifically, weightlifting for wisdom, your charioteer. Your mind is yours to own, which means that you should have the power to control anything that happens within it, any word, any idea, any emotion. Total control over you mental space is a reality you deserve, and to get there you need strength.

With meditation you are looking to strengthen your single pointed focus, your ability for governance of the contents of mind, your sovereignty of decision making. Think about the simple act of spending 1 minute with no thoughts going through your mind. If you have highly developed governance, complete control of your processing system, then sitting down and spending 1 minute without holding on to, or following along with, the thoughts inside your head, that should be no problem. Sadly though, for most humans raised in this modern, screen heavy, society, that task is practically impossible.

Just as lifting a weight is work, meditation too is work, the work of you focusing your attention on a specific point, idea, or state of your conscious choosing. The typical form of meditation that most humans may know is the ‘clear your head’ type, where the one doing meditation is usually seated and tries to clear their head of all thoughts, focusing on a state of peace within the mind, allowing thoughts that bubble up to drift by without you putting your focus on them. This is quite a direct form of mediation, you have cleared some time from your day and you focusing on this one thing, like going to the gym and working out (for your mind).

The direct type of meditation, where you sit down to specifically meditate, can be used in many different ways, typically in the categories of reflection (past), analysis (present), and growth (future). Focused meditation can be used intensely for introspection, or for grasping the whole, and it can be casually practised for inducing calm, or allowing creativity to flow.

Ideally direct meditation practices should be undertaken, as regularly as you would go to the gym or go for a walk, or get some fresh air…

Meditation, meditative practices, develop the emotional/conceptual processing needed for Self sovereignty, and so why just have it only as an exercise, why not bring these principles into the way we construct our Self through experience? We spend a lot of our day, as we go through our life, inside our own head. We may be cooking dinner, travelling to and from work, sitting on the toilet, taking a shower, waiting for someone, there are many times through our average day when we are not directly required to think. So usually when we have these times Self fills the blank space, with some internal thoughts (whatever that is, based on our own past experiences). We may be thinking about some work project, some home matter that needs attending, some social mistake we believe we made this morning, whatever the Self feels is most important at the time. We can use these times, mark them out in our consciousness, as triggers to work on our own governance within mind. We can use these time during our day as opportunities to do some focused meditation. Such as chopping carrots without any thoughts in our head, focusing in being present in the now. We can walk to work embracing the beauty of the natural world, the idiosyncrasies of the part of earth we live. We can spend that short time waiting for our partner to finish up before going out, to go over our goals, reimagining our targets, identifying paths to success, and specifying the next few steps to achieve.

You are infinite creative potential, and so there are infinite ways you can develop meditation for your own Self. The important thing to remember is that meditation is an exercise to develop your sovereign focused attention, your ability to govern the landscape of mind actively or be a detached observe, and so any exercise you do that develops your ability to hold, to control, your attention is a form of meditation.

There are many good teachers of meditation out there, do seek out different ones, different methods for further exploration. Find something that works for you. Remember that it is not about just doing the activity in and of itself, it is about using the activity to grow, and empower, your Self so that you can achieve what you want (good governance through Self sovereignty so that you may enjoy the reactions of a mentally healthy human being).

Chapter 8 – Purpose

You are part of life. Life is a processing system. Looking at the evolution of life, from single celled organisms through plants, to you, there is a clear direction, a purpose, that we can define for life, for you. The general direction, and thus good starting point for defining a purpose, for life, for you, is the progression toward greater abilities to receive, process, and react.

Life is part of the universe, and looking at the universe from its beginning until now there is a clear pattern to its unfolding. Again, we can take this general direction, this universal movement, as another point in our definition of purpose for life, for you. As well as progressing toward greater abilities to receive, process, and react, our purpose includes creating, maintaining, and promoting relationships that produce greater systems, such as family, community, species, and life in general.

What we are trying to convey to you is that there is an inherent purpose to your life that can be defined just from you existing within this universe, and from you being alive. This is the baseline, the starting point, from here we grow.

A purpose is a goal, somewhere you want to be, something you want to achieve. More than this though, a purpose is a reaction. Because reactions are caused by processing, a purpose is a statement about the kind of Self you are, the Self you want to be.

You can think of purpose as destination, and to get to a destination you need to go down a specific path, if you go down a different path you will end up in a different destination. The purpose you define determines the path you take, determines the effort you put into the things you do.

You don’t need just one purpose though, you can have many purposes, and on different levels also. You can have your main overall purpose, such as working toward mental health through the cultivation of Self sovereignty, along with various purposes for other areas of your choosing. For example, you could have purpose associated with work (such as get a promotion), you could have purpose associated with family (be a good partner/parent), you could have purpose associated with what ever it is you want to achieve, hobbies, projects, grand plans, whatever.

The fullest lives are those full of purpose, purpose that extends beyond the individual to greater systems such as family, community, and the Order of Natural Existence.

Purpose is power, because you are consciously setting what you want to achieve. By defining a purpose you are saying that this is what I am going to manifest, this is what I am going to create. You then have, if you have been paying attentions, two points of reference – the now, where you are, and the defined future, where you are going to be. Following the laws of cause and effect, all you need to do is plot the journey from here to there.

Just as everything in existence should be thought of in terms of systems, everything in your life should be thought of in terms of purpose. When it comes to every thought in your head, to every behaviour – why? The purpose you live your life by is described in your reactions – the thoughts in your head and your behaviours. You can look at these reactions and see your own purpose for this behaviour – is it bad or good….

Obviously, from everything we have talked about (in our past videos), we want to consciously choose good purposes for our lives. We want a good general direction, we want to identify harmful processing that needs to be modified (and make provisions to change them), and we need to remember that everything we do we do with purpose. If we do not define and live by our own, the our purpose will be chosen by others (and it may not be in our best interest). So cultivate your power through consciously defining the life you want, through defining the Self you want driving the contents of your mind and behaviour. Set the purpose of your thoughts and actions today to achieve the Self, the life, you want tomorrow.

Chapter 9 – The emotional/conceptual makeup of Will

In this chapter we will explore the emotional/conceptual structures that make up will.

As our universal measure of quality is based around the growth of systems, our individual Self growth is also based around the growth of systems (in particular, the relationships that enable systems to exist, to grow). Our experience is that which shapes the Self, and the Self is our decision making centre. The Self decides the nature of our relationships, with world, other humans, life, and even, possibly even consciously (with the right experiences), the make up of our Self. Our relationships fall into two categories, repulsive (moving us away from others) and attractive (moving us toward others). It is by the repulsive or attractive nature of relationships that our Self uses to assign meaning to the things we are relating with. Initially this is pure emotional meaning, pain is repulsive, repels us away from things, and pleasure is attractive, causing us to go back for more. Through this experience of sensory stimuli and emotional reaction we create sensory/emotional glyphs (packets of sensory/emotional information). As we learn language, we first start adding the language dimension to our sensory/emotional glyphs, creating sensory/emotional/language glyphs (such as the sight of a ball, tied to an emotional response, tied to the word “ball”). We dont just learn glyphs in isolation through. With language and our ability for abstraction we start making relationships between glyphs, naming the relationships, and developing greater concepts (such as “ball” and “bob” and “owns”).

Language, and our ability for abstraction, to see or map relationships, is our greatest ability. With language we are able to extend far beyond the immediate sensory world, using physical tools to build a perspective of existence greater than what we can see with our senses alone. More than this though, language doesn’t just enable us to move beyond the immediate knowledge of the sensory world, language also enables us to move beyond the immediate meaning of our emotional world. This means that humans are able to move beyond a basic pain/please meaning to our relationships, to operating with conceptually developed meanings of fear and love.

Through the process of our three dimensional information growth, we develop linguistic, conceptual, structures built from our basic emotional drives – and depending on how our experiences, in the world and in our mind, have shaped our Self, these emotional/conceptual structures can will more more or less repulsive and attractive (with the overall result being a Self that is more one side or the other).

So, we all should be familiar with the repulsive and attractive emotional conceptual horses that we develop to pull our chariot along. But just in case you are not..

The repulsive side develops through experiences that push us away from other humans, other life, that disconnect us from greater systems such as family, friends, community, that disconnect us from reality and the Order of Natural Existence – remember these are our experiences with the world, other humans, AND the experiences we allow to run through our mental space. Disconnection tips us to the Fear side of the scale, and fear is repulsive. You can think of fear as the underlying repulsive quality of various situation specific emotional conceptual structures we may develop – such as greed, hate (or wrath), envy, and boredom (and other deadly sins). The more our Self becomes shaped by these structures, the more our Self becomes steeped in fear, the more repulsive our reactions (contents of mind and behaviour) become.

The attractive side develops through experiences that pull us closer to other humans, other life, that connect us to greater systems such as family, friends, community, that connect us to reality and the Order of Natural Existence. Connecting moves us further into the Love side of the scale, and Love is attractive. You can think of Love as the underlying attractive quality of various situation specific emotional conceptual structures we may develop – such as benevolence, empathy, gratefulness, and creativity (and other features of Goodness).

Notice how all of this is rather binary – repulsion and attraction, pain and pleasure, fear, and love…

Our emotional/conceptual structures develop in a binary sense, with each structure having its opposite – so, like hot and cold are two sides of the same thing, temperature, so too is greed and benevolence two sides of the same thing, boredom and creativity are two sides of the same thing, and so on. This knowledge is important to remember for another chapter, when we look at some practical ideas for self growth.

As we grow into adulthood we are becoming very good at abstracting, and we are creating this whole world inside our head, imprinting it onto the Self. The move from basic emotional responses of pain and pleasure to more conceptual forms of fear and love requires language, and it is with language that we tie glyphs together into greater and greater concepts, all grounded in a repulsive or attractive emotional response. The key to mastering our horses, our emotional responses, is mastering our ability for language. Language and abstract thought used to tame the horses for good is how wisdom is cultivated, how Self sovereignty is cultivated and maintained.

The process of human Self evolution, from the Ego to the Super Ego, is one of actively developing the emotional/conceptual structures that make up the Self, using the feedback loop of mind, mindfulness techniques, and conscious programming, to become the charioteer holding onto mind and skilfully directing the horses on a trail through life that is good for us.

Chapter 10 – Programming the Self (Self programming)

There are three steps for programming the Self – observe, analyse, action.

Observation employs such techniques that many would call mindfulness; analysing requires having a purpose, or measure, for assessing what you are observing; and action involves the planing doing of your Self growth.

Let us look at these three steps for Self programming in a little more detail.

The first step for Self programming requires us to observe the Self, to pay attention to the thoughts in your head, to notice the quality and quantity of your thoughts and behaviours over time, days, weeks. Identify the emotional base of your common thought patterns and the emotions driving your behaviour, are they angry or accepting, anxious or at peace, depressed or joyful, board of full of creative energy? Notice how you react to things of the world, or situations, what thoughts they stimulate, what emotional responses are driving your reactions? Develop a picture of who you are, of the dominant emotional responses, the underlying stories, relationships, that cause the thoughts running through your head, and your behaviours. There is no need for judgement at this stage, no need to hide from anything, just observe your Self (that which causes the contents of your mind and behaviour) in operation over time, and note the sensory, emotional, language entity that it has become.

There is no need for judgement in the first step, because you want as clear and accurate picture as you can. For this reason it is important to accept all knowledge into your analysis, when we start judging our Self it is normal response to withdraw, to be repulsed, and this can get in the way of bringing information about the Self to a place whereby you are able to analyse and deal with it. While we want the first step free from judgement the second step, analyse, is basically Self judgement. When we analyse our thoughts and behaviours we recognise that they are windows into the Self, our unrestrained thoughts and behaviour tell us who you we have become, the give indication as to the emotions and stories that shape your reactions. How you react to things of the world and situations is a guide to the types of relationships you have with these things, are your relationships repulsive or attractive (and which type of reaction is appropriate for the situation)? To best analyse what you observe you need to have a purpose underlying the exercise, such as a purpose about what kind of human you want to be, and what is the nature of the horses that you want to drive you? It is easy, in the kind of world we live in, to develop certain repulsive aspects to our Self, such as those based around greed (with addictions to money, power, sex, drugs, shopping, food, and gambling being common manifestations of this), depression, anxiety, and boredom. If there are traits of the Self that are an issue, you do not set a purpose of not engaging in those thoughts, or not doing that thing, having that response. Purpose is a positive, you set as purpose how you want things to be, what you want your reactions to be like. Fundamentally, it is our emotional responses that are the basic mechanism for our drive (away from and toward) – the problems we have are based on repulsive emotional/conceptual drives, so the solution is found through the relevant attractive emotional/conceptual drive. If we have problems with greed, we focus on developing benevolent responses to situations, benevolent thoughts and activities we can do instead of the greed based ones. Anger is reduced through compassion, anxiety through peace, depression through joy, and boredom through creativity. This is the key to Self programming, for reducing and eliminating repulsive aspects of the Self. We identify the base emotional/conceptual drives that cause our repulsive thoughts and behaviours, we identify the attractive opposite, and we plan the reactions, the thoughts and behaviours that would be an attractive Self would produce.

At the end of the day though, “health” is good, so we want a Self that is producing good contents of mind and behaviour; so you can always refer to the universal measure of quality for assessing if your common thought patterns are good.

The last step for programming your Self is action. Through the analysing step you have been developing action plans for shaping repulsive processing traits, for evolving aspects of your Self that are pushing you away from others, family, friends, life, the universe as a whole. You have analysed where you are now, you have identified where you want to be, and you have considered healthier responses, healthier contents of mind and behaviour, that will lead you to where you want to be. This last step is the hardest, because we forget so easily, we slip back into our old programming, repeating the same response we have spent years learning and perfecting. Part of making this last step effective is taking action to remind you to take action. This can include things like notes and reminders around the house, wearing certain clothes, rings, necklaces – basically you are modifying your physical world, shaping it with the intent of reminding you to action your plan for Self growth. You do this so that as you go about your day there are obvious reminders you cant help but notice, triggers for remembering to action your Self growth now.

So that is the three steps for Self programming, for Self growth, observe, analyse, and action. Work out the repulsive thoughts and behaviours you want to change. Identify the emotional base of these reactions. What is the attractive emotional opposite of what you want to change? Develop concepts, stories, practices tied to the attractive emotional base, and seek to remember.

While meditation is a practice for strengthening the will, mindfulness is a practice for programming the Self. We use more mindfulness when observing and analysing, but the strength of will gained through meditation is required for action. When combined this way, mindfulness and meditation are a most powerful tool which can be used to shape your Self however you want.

Remember the 3 dimensions of the Self, sensory, emotional, and linguistic. The Self is best thought of as a collections of stories all related together – while your past experiences may have written the story of your Self to date, your experience within mind has the most profound impact on your Self development. By taking control of your mental space, through meditation for strength of will and mindfulness for observation and analysing, you can take control of your Self programming for good.

There is a saying that you can not teach old dogs new tricks, and this speaks to the fact that repetition of experience firms processing pathways; the more we do things the more likely we become to choose that path in the future. This means that for those of us who have developed repulsive type processing that we want to change, the more that processing has become ingrained in us the harder it is (the more effort we will need to put in) to change. Our processing system is incredibly plastic though, and with the right application of the way and will, any of us can modify repulsive (dis-ease causing) processing for good. At the end of the day, all this project can do, all a therapist or psychiatrist can do, is provide you with information, with signposts, that may help you find a good path to walk down. It is ultimately up to you to define exactly what path you are going to take, and it is up to you to take those steps yourself – this is the way and the will.

You are inherently powerful, you will.

Chapter 11 – In summery (the way and will to cultivate and maintain mental health)

Mental health is about producing good reactions.

The mind is part of our information processing system, we receive, process, and react to sensory, emotional, and language information. Processing is the main part of our system, we need to receive in order to process, and everything we process produces a reaction. We are unable to directly see our processing system, but we are able to observe its reactions, so the “mental” aspect of mental health is about the reactions we produce.

Health is a term of quality, we use this term when assessing the quality of a system, is it of bad or good quality. When talking about health, as opposed to illness, we are talking about the good quality of the system. So, when we consider these two terms together, mental health is about the good quality of our processing system, which we assess (judge the quality of) through our reactions, in other words, mental health is about producing good reactions.

What are the reactions of our information processing system? Our reactions are the sensory, emotional, language contents of mind, and our behaviour. We receive sensory information about the outside (of our body) world through our senses, we receive emotional information about the general gist of what our body is being driven away from or toward, and we receive language information. The most interesting thing about the contents of our mind is that while they are reactions produced by our brains processing of received information, they also function as inputs back into our brains processing – this creates a feedback loop that, when you learn how to master, is the key to unlocking your Self (enabling you to have the ability for consciously directed development/evolution of Self).

Our Self is best thought of as our information processing software, a collection of sensory, emotional, linguistic bits of information that we relate into stories, stored in the physical relationships between billions of neurons in your brain that you develop and loose throughout your experience. We will get to the Self more in a bit, for now we raise the concept of Self, and the fact that it is an informational body, to get to a central point – because the Self is informational, and health is a term of quality, to understand mental health (and what it looks like, what reactions are bad) we need to understand what good actually is.

Our species is facing a bit of a quality crisis, a crisis in how we define what quality, what good, actually is. The trouble is that we are all individuals, we have gone through different experiences and developed differing subjective perspectives. This is a major issue, because most (if not all) conflict, disagreement, war, and fighting stems from a difference in how quality, in how good, is measured. We have science, but that by itself cannot save us, because while science is good at dealing with the quantity of the world, it is unable to help us with quality. What we need is the parent of science, philosophy. Philosophy is literally the love of wisdom, and wisdom is the ability to make good decisions – you are smart enough to put two and two together as to why the love of wisdom is something to embrace if you want mental health. Once upon a time science was just a part of philosophy, but for a long time now these areas of human inquisition have been separated. We are re-uniting these two areas, to bring balance back into our perspective, so that we can deal with both the quality and quantity of the universe.

A universal measure of quality, an objective morality, can be found when we unite science and philosophy and view the universe (and all it contains) from a systems perspective. When we looked at the evolution of the Self, we did so by examining the evolution of life from a perspective of systems. Life is a processing system, it receives, process, and reacts to matter/energy – the evolution of life is the evolution of processing systems. Now, if we step back to look at the bigger picture, to look at the evolution of the universe itself, from the singularity, the so called “big bang”, until now, we can view this process in terms of cooling, and as the universe cooled it resulted in various strata, or layers, each distinguishable by systems. Instead of processing systems, Natural Existence (the universe without life) is made up of regular systems – with a system being defined as individuals having specific relationships that are predictable/describable in terms of law. These are quantum systems in the quantum layer, atomic systems in the atomic layer, and physical systems, such as solar systems, in the physical layer of Natural Existence.

Within each layer we have individuals (individual quanta, individual atoms, individual lumps of matter), and the individuals have relationships that are predictable/describable in terms of law. The relationships of individuals on layers of existence are of the same kind, they are either repulsive or attractive. There is an overall affect of these relationships within the layers, that certain individuals will have certain types of relationships so as to create systems that are greater than the individuals alone. This overall affect of relationships between individuals, that we see over and over again throughout the unfolding, the evolution, of this universe, is the underlying principle, the unifying principle, it is our measure of quality.

The underlying pattern is individuals having relationships to produce greater systems. Certain quanta have certain relationships, predictable/describable by law, to produce greater sub-atomic systems. Sub-atomic systems are then the individuals in the next layer of existence, and they have relationships, predictable/describable by law, and produce greater systems of atoms. Atoms are then the individuals that have relationships to produce what we would call physical matter, lumps of lead, gold, air, and water. The pattern continues with processing systems. Individual cells have relationships that produce bodies, and bodies develop specialised organ systems that function together as a greater system. Individual humans group together in families, friend groups, community and society or nation.

To define a most basic definition of good, based on this universal order; good is that which promotes or maintains the development of greater systems.

As we are defining what is good for individual humans, we are talking about systems greater than our individual Self, so that would be family systems, community, our species, and even life, as a whole. So good are the relationships, the interactions between individuals, that promotes or maintain family systems, community, our species, and the whole system of life. On the other side of the polarity; bad are the relationships that discourage or destroy family, community, our species and life as a whole.

To make good decisions we need a good Self, and we develop a good Self through receiving good information. Remember that while we receive information from our senses, we also receive information from our mind, so controlling the contents of your mind is important. Now we are starting to move from the way to mental health to the will of mental health. So we will finish this section by saying that mental health is about aligning your Self with the order of natural existence, with the universal, objective, morality, so that you will be able to play a functional role in the promotion and maintenance of systems greater than your individual Self – this is the way to cultivate and maintain mental health.

Before we get to will, we want to include a practical idea that is a good way to cultivate and maintain mental health. This idea is about controlling the quality and quantity of what you consume and create. This is about controlling the information you are receiving from the world, from social media, tv, etc, and also what you are putting back into the world, the things you do, destroy or create; and this idea is also about controlling the creation of the contents of your mind, controlling what you focus on, because this information is an input back into your Self.

The best way to imagine your will, the parts involved and their relationships, is with the analogy of the chariot (from the Bhagavad Gita). Your body and emotional drives are represented by the body of the chariot and the horses pulling it along, this is to say that your body is moved by your emotional responses. On the chariot there is a charioteer, who is holding the reins which are connected to the horses; the charioteer is wisdom, and the reins are mind. Without the development of wisdom, the reins, your mind, is pulled along by the horses, and they can take you places you don’t want to go.

Wisdom is a combination of things, it is partly knowledge (the knowledge to identify the right choice), and it is also strength (the ability to actually make the right choice). Think of a charioteer, if she has the strength to hold onto the reins, but doesn’t know the right path, the chariot could end up in ruin. If she knows the right path, but doesn’t have the strength to hold onto mind, the chariot could end up in ruin. To be successful, the charioteer needs to know the right path (this is the way) and have the strength to hold onto mind and direct the emotional drives (this is the will).

The strength of the charioteer comes from language and our ability to use it. As we start to learn language we begin to move from the immediate sensory/emotional world into a world that is more abstract. The meaning we relate with things, which was initially purely emotional, starts to become more conceptually enhanced, from pain and pleasure to fear and love. Because creating and using language is a process of creating and using abstraction, to develop our language ability we also develop our ability for abstraction, our ability to make or see connections, relationships, between things. When we embark on this process of abstracting our Self from our relationships with the world around us through using a combination of science and philosophy, guided by a universal measure of quality, we develop the strength of the charioteer. Remember, that we program a computer through using a language to create structures that determine how information will be processed – likewise, we program our Self through using language (tied to an emotional base) that determines how information will be processed.

So your inner strength, your will to consciously direct your attention, is bound with your conceptual, your language, development. This brings us to an important point, if you want to have conscious control over your will, you need to first use your will to consciously set out what you want – you need to have purpose. You information processing system is always, always, receiving, processing, and producing reactions. If you are not going to consciously control the purpose you are to achieve by receiving, processing, and producing reactions, then your subconscious will do that (and you may, or may not, like the results). Purpose is essential for cultivating and maintaining mental health, if you want this, you must set it as your purpose, then work out the way and develop the will, to achieve it. Although we dont really want just one purpose, life is varied with much to do and explore. So have your main purpose, and developing/maintaining mental health is a good overall purpose to have, but also have other purposes – such as being a good partner, raising good children, being a good member of a club that interests you, having a nice home, doing or creating something. Without a purpose you have nothing to set your conscious will to, when we fill our life with purpose, there is always something for us to consciously direct our attention to.

For developing conscious strength the best thing you can do is embrace and practice meditative concepts in your life. Meditation doesn’t have to be a sit down and take time to do just that one thing, it is something you can easily embrace into your day to day life. There are plenty of times during the day when we are doing physical tasks that do not require much conscious focus – having a shower, chopping veggies for dinner, walking to X. Use these times to employ meditative techniques with the overall goal of strengthening your conscious will, your ability to focus your attention. This may be engaging in some mantra type meditation, or clearing your mind meditation, or even meditating on a problem or project that you are working out. There are lots of meditation ideas and descriptions out there, have a look around and see if you can build your own understanding of the basics of this practice, and then have fun with it.

What we want to achieve with this work is the development of Self sovereignty – to be supreme ruler, to possess ultimate power, over the reactions (the contents of our mind and behaviour) created by our Self. The last step in this puzzle is to use mindfulness techniques to observe, analyse, and perform action on our Self. We observe the reaction of the Self, the contents of our mind and behaviours. We analyse repetitive themes, appropriateness, and emotional drive behind the contents of mind and behaviour, and assess the quality (what does it say about our Self, is this something to change?). We then work out a plan and perform action on our Self, such as setting up alternative processing for common triggers, using the feedback loop of mind to change unhealthy concepts, transmuting persistent repulsive emotional responses, or just changing the quantity of certain quality experiences for the health, the good, of our Self.