#introspection

#introspection

In childhood, he felt like he did not belong to the small cultish church of his family, a fact and internal pain he minimized. The spirit of the church did not fit, and he felt a pull to what became the shadows of sex. Pornography, prostitutes, and internet obsession drew him increasingly into a secret life. He felt an outsider, and the not belonging represented an unanswered need for security.

Not long ago, I was talking to an old friend and China analyst about the need for Intelligence Community (IC) analysts to spend significantly more time looking at themselves and their own agencies, processes, procedures, habits, biases, etc.-in other words, to be more introspective. I thought this an uncontroversial assertion as it has beenwell established in management literature that healthy organizations have robust introspective proclivities.

Consider what happens when you observe anything external to yourself. Light reflects off an object, travels through space, enters your eye, and triggers photoreceptor cells. These generate neural signals that journey through multiple processing stages in your visual cortex, integrate with other sensory information and memory, and finally produce the conscious experience of "seeing." That's extraordinary mediation. Multiple transformation layers where information gets filtered, compressed, interpreted, and reconstructed. By the time you "see" something, you're experiencing a highly processed representation, not the thing itself.

Now it returns to observe and experience what's there from a different vantage. Mercury rules how we process reality and make meaning within the world. Retrogrades are a reorientation of perspective. Under the influence of Sagittarius, we review the belief systems that exist within us. Under Scorpio, we review the unconscious material that propels us to have these belief systems. Sagittarius is vast heights, Scorpio is profound depths.

I described the sinking dread after social effort, the sense of being too visible. At astonishing speed, the AI responded gently, intelligently, without platitudes.

The paintings in Be Your Own Cool are contemplative offerings that nurture the individuality of each subject while evoking a sense of intimacy.

The chapel was conceived as a space for introspection, retreat, and spiritual connection. It aims to redefine its location by utilizing the existing structure.

"Listening to the track through headphones, I could feel my usually agitated pulse steady itself, mirroring the music's rhythm-calming me even as it sparked me to attention."