The William Forrester & Jamal Wallace in You

A genius kid from low rung meets a prize winning recluse and both transform each other.


Sixteen year old Jamal Wallace (Rob Brown) gets an opportunity in a prestigious private school. School's hope pinned high on his basketball ability and not so much in anything else, Jamal accidentally encounters William Forrester (Sean Connery). 


Forrester's tragedies in life rips him away from his success (Pulitzer Prize).In course of tutelage to deserving Jamal, Forrester gradually and accidentally kindles his own life. Jamal's talent (for writing) shines and how !!!




"Awareness" is the proverbial Jamal here in each of us. It is at the low rung of our priorities and importance. We believe that everything else that awareness is able to do for us, our thinking-feeling-saying-doing, is more worthy of cultivation. 

Epiphanies and deep longings and timeless wisdom are the proverbial Forresters in us. Once or few times, having had the grand success of tasting deep texture of life, it gets swamped and sucked in the daily tragedies of to-do and to-become.


In some sense, awareness is also seen as an underdog. 

In this write-up, i am setting out to share case for:



1. Why Bandwidth of Awareness is more important than 5G bandwidth?


2. What is difficult about grasping bare awareness?

3. Do we have some good news around the working awareness? 

4. There is Awareness & there is Activity. What enables/inhibits cultivating awareness and what awareness harnesses?

...

1. Why Bandwidth of Awareness is more important than 5G bandwidth?

we are or in a stream of experiences.
we live in a continuous stream of experiences.
we connect experiences.
we experience some of them different from another.

we tend to create boundaries of those experiences.

because of our senses and sense-making and social construction.

for example: seeing one color different from another color is an experience of boundary of both, or hearing one sound different from another is an experience of boundary of both, or touching two surfaces and being able to feel consistency or inconsistency ...

may i call this as "discretization" and or "reification" (bringing to life or reality).

sometimes we use those boundaries and label them using words.

example: when i look this bottle on the table (see pic nearby)...

there is the act of "looking" and it doesn't talk about the hardware used for looking and the software used for looking and the quality of looking itself. 

then there is the bottle, the mention of which doesnt tell or bring to awareness or specify the ways atoms inside of it are functioning, and the gravity which is working to keep it on the table. 

and then there is the "table", the mention of which is not specifying as to the wood from which it was made and how old the tree would have been, and in what geography, and who was the cutter and the carpenter 

So, the bottle on the table is enmeshed in web of relationship with various phenomenon or laws or disciplines and people, across history, geography and scales of existence. 

Similarly, when we define a term, we actually create their boundaries for sake of "conceptual handling and passing on and arrangeability" with other concepts...in some sense developing "conceptual architecture".

In some sense, we bring to awareness or it is brought about in default mode such that only some part of the "conceptual architecture" , and or experience is brought forth, and lot is left out. That which is left out is not available to be appreciated or savored or reflected up, unless we cultivate awareness to do so. 


So, the world can keep creating more products or experiences or conveniences, it will always leave us high and dry...until we have the basic foundational awareness that illuminates the questioning of the "what and why and how" of these things...and the bandwidth of awareness that is able to power the "hold and process and connect and evaluate". 

...

2. What is difficult about grasping bare awareness?

What makes some definitions/labels/experiences appear or feel more solid or concrete or fitting versus others that appear or feel more fluid or abstract or wriggling? 

I believe that one of the most primitive senses that we have is "touch". And then maybe other senses evolved thereafter. The sense of touch has limitations/features, because it has to be in proximity and contact with that which it senses. 

But for other senses, like "sight" or "sound" or "smell", they act more like wi-fi versions of the touch...giving remote sense-making options or flexibilities.

If i ask you to report to me as to what surface you are sitting on right now, you will take your awareness towards the experience of sitting and the report to me about the surface (which of course will have a lot of processes involved from your memory, perception, social signaling, language, etc).

In the example, it was the awareness that shifted from "reading this blogspot" to moving to "what am i sitting on". While senses and its related sense-making apparatuses are involved, it was the awareness that enabled the moving or shifting.  

When we begin to define things like "awareness" itself, which itself is a priori required to make sense, it becomes difficult to talk about it. Because it is awareness that enables the grasping through senses, and not the senses that enable the grasping of awareness. In fact, the bare awareness is "ungraspable" or "un-sense-makeable). 

...

3. Do we have some good news around the working awareness? 

Working awareness is that which aids our day-to-day experiences and functioning. And it has some features:

3. A. Existence of Awareness:

• If the fundamental awareness or its potential doesn't exist, it cannot be brought about. 

• Certain biological conditions (life, healthy body state, etc) are pre-requisite for awareness to exist.

• Not only certain states affect the existence of awareness, but certain states affect the quality/features of awareness. Such states are affected by long term factors and short term factors. 

• Long term factors include aspects like genetic dispositions and their manifestations, age, overarching life satisfaction, lifestyle choices, social capital and more...

• Short term factors include aspects of one's sleep patterns, nutrition, physical movement, mental health, stress coping and more, frequency of positive and negative affect, and more. 

3. B. Let's attempt at looking at some features of the working-awareness

• That which moves or can be moved across space/location/objects/situations/phenomenon/experiences

• That which has limits or the limits can be set to what it can hold or contain or illuminate

• That which in itself doesn't cause change to what it holds or contains or illuminates, but can enable the attempt to change, provided the tools to cause change and the will to cause the change align with the awareness in order to effect the change. 

• That which can flicker or still or these could be tinkered with training

• That which can be brought about to function in any of the above, by more effort or less effort, and depending on how it is practiced over time through different contemplative practices

...

4. There is Awareness & there is Activity. What enables/inhibits cultivating awareness and what awareness harnesses?

In some sense, the whole of existence can be boiled down to awareness (stilling, witness, eternal) and activity (here it means moving, transforming, ephemeral).

Activity happening at all scale and span and time...inside us, outside us, interactivity of inside and outside, and interactivity of things outside to other things outside (if for sake of argument we take it that there is an inside and outside).

The activity has a certain momentum right from its origins (if for sake of argument we take it that there is an origin).

The activity can be channelized,not all of them and all the time, but some of them and some of the time.

Patanjali's Yoga talks about "stilling the modifications of mind". 

It is directed towards cultivating awareness in a manner that one is able to preside over one's activities.

Activities that are coupled between our think-feel-say-do (skills) paradigm with the political-economic-social (structure) of the day. 

No matter what activities we pursue, it falls in pleasure-pain matrix. That which can give pleasure can give pain. That which can give pain can give pleasure.

Activities pursued without deep awareness will result in habitual-reflexive-tribal approach/avoid tendencies for pleasure and pain. It would result in breaking down or narrowing of relationship with self, others and nature.

The working features of awareness, when tuned through practice, enables a better and deeper understanding and pursuit of one's activities.

And what can bring this about?

There is a need for reimagining skills and structures.

Skills and structures enable/inhibit cultivating awareness and what it harnesses. 

Skills have more to do with the individual, and structures have more to do with the interactions/in-between spaces (political-economic-social spectrum).

Reimagining would has aspects of

• reimagining objectivity and subjectivity,
• reimagining accountability of leaders and institutions,
• reimagining hierarchies and networks, building better governance of powerful designations/influences, 
• reimagining competition and innovation,
• reimagining value or price of anything, 
• reimagining returns on complexity of society, 
• reimagining existential risk and preparedness, 
• reimagining fairness,
• ...and more

Reimagined Skills enabling Reimagined Structures. 
And Reimagined Structures enabling Reimagined Skills.

A lot is already happening in this direction. And a lot is also happening in perpetuating the old skills and structures.

Not all of the old is bad. Not all of the new is good. 

We won't solve everything.

We will have appreciated the toil-sweat-blood of the past.

We will have added some small features for a better life for our and later generation.

The Jamal (genius underdog awareness) in us and the Forrester (epiphanies and deep longing and timeless wisdom) in us will need to spend more time with each other and bring in transformation.