Structure of Orientation Processing
Imagine a scuba diver who plunges into a muddy lake. Up on the boat, he still had a clear plan of what he wanted to do, but now where he is a few meters below the surface, all he sees is darkness, and the first question that comes to his mind is "Where am I?"
This is the situation in which we find ourselves whenever we have maneuvred ourselves into a really profound confusion. The plans we had have disappeared so thoroughly that all we know is that we don't know anything. The reasons why they disappeared can be interesting, and it would be good to understand them so we can avoid repeating the same mistakes in the future, but more urgently we have to reorient ourselves and find our way out of the muddy waters.
We find ourselves in very much the same situation of confusion and zero vision when we start a new life in a human body, a new incarnation. Most people have made a plan for this life in the spirit world, they even have made contracts with other people that they will work together as husband and wife, or mother and daughter etc., but these things are forgotten at birth and the new life's lessons begin in a state of utter disorientation.
A walnut tree's seed just dropped by the tree is a good illustration. What does it do? It first grows a root, then it grows a sprout, and from there on it keeps growing higher and wider.
Exactly the same thing is also our own basic program. Not the physical side of our existence, a whole load of activities designed to keep us physically alive, but the spiritual tasks that we planned before we plunged into the muddy waters of life on Earth: to evolve in one or several specific areas of our character. We first grow a root - we learn our country's language, we learn a profession good enough to support a body or even a family of bodies -, and then, when we are anchored in our new life, we can start to ask the same questions that the scuba diver asks: Where am I? What is my plan for this lifetime? Where do I want to go?
"Where" is a word that is innocent only at first sight. It has many more meanings than the obvious question for a location.
"Where am I?" can yield an answer like, say, "in Paris". This is a geographic location that comes with specific coordinates. Obviously that means that it comes with a climate and a timezone. But it also comes with a language, a political system, it comes with a history, with traditions, an average mood level, it comes with something like a country's or a town's personality, or in other words, with a group mind.
In order to get ourselves oriented in our new incarnation, we have to ask the question "Where am I?" in all these different meanings. And with some additional questions, we can arrive at a satisfying answer to our second question, "Where do I want to be?", which in most cases means "Where do I want to go?" - because it would be a rare event to find ourselves in exactly the place where we want to be.
Let's look at the climate, an immediate consequence of a location's coordinates. Climate is typically a function of temperature and the annual amount of rainfall. The average annual temperature and precipitation for Paris is 11.7 C (53.0 F), and 641.6 mm (25.2 inches) respectively. The next question is "What average temperature would I prefer?" and "How much water do I want to come down from the sky?" - which again depends on our occupation, because a skiing coach wants more water and less warmth than a cactus breeder.
Now the answer to the question "Where do I want to go?" becomes clearer. As a skiing coach we would probably go to the mountains of Switzerland, Austria or Canada. As a cactus breeder to Greece, Italy, Spain or one of the central American countries.
There are other climate zones on Earth where we probably won't succeed, neither as a skiing coach, nor as a cactus breeder. On the Antarctic continent, it is too cold for any kind of activity. In the Sahara desert, the heat and the absence of water doesn't allow any prolonged stay. This brings us to the question of the viability zone on any of the scales we will be discussing in a moment, and to the the question that we need to ask immediately after "Where am I?", which is "Is this a viable temperature zone?", where the word temperature can be replaced by any of the other systems we will examine.
It would be quite educational to find out what the upper and lower limits are of any of these systems. For instance, the hottest temperature on Earth ever recorded most likely occurred in Death Valley, California during 43 consecutive days between July 6 and August 17, 1917. During those days, the temperature was over 48 °C (120 °F). The national weather service recorded 56.7 °C (134 °F). The date reported there was July 10, 1913. At the other end of the scale, Vostok, Antarctica, is the home of the coldest temperature on Earth at a cool -89 °C (183 K). At the Russian research station the temperature is regularly in the -30 to the -60 °C mark...
As nice as it can be to research these things and brag with our great knowledge, all we really need to know is only whether we are in a viability zone.
Back to the questions that we need to ask in order to orient ourselves in a new human life, after we have grown our first root by going through basic education:
Question: "Where am I?" Answer: "In Paris."
Question: "Is this a viable climate zone?" Answer: "Yes."
Question: "Where do I want to go?" Possible answers: "It would be nice to stay", or "I would like to go to Switzerland to become a skiing coach", or "I want to go to Mexico and become a cactus breeder".
If we had found ourselves in the Sahara - not a likely scenario for a young man or woman, but very likely if other climate zones than the weather are asked for, only one answer would have been possible: "I must get out of here as fast as possible!" In such a case, the perfect destination is not the most important answer to have, because practically every destination will be more viable than staying in the Sahara.
There are only a few "Where am I?" questions that need to be asked in our physical lives, but quite some more in the spiritual part of our lives. "Where is my country's political system? Is it in a viable zone?" is a question that may lead to massive changes. Because it is not necessary to stay in a politically insane country for a whole lifetime. In fact, it can be a karmic task, or a task planned before the start of an incarnation, to escape such a system and arrive in a politically sane country. If a country spends all its money on weapons of mass destruction while its citizens don't have health insurance, we may not really be in a viable zone there, and moving away may be a family father's responsibility. This is only a random example.
Inside a country and its main culture, several sub-cultures can exist. Here we have the next important "Where am I?" question. "Where is my culture or sub-culture? Is it in a viable zone?" A tradition of genital mutilation, a tradition of stoning women to death just for talking to a man in a park, such things are indicators for non-viable cultures and again moving away may become a responsibility, especially where there are children involved..
A spirit who has just started a new incarnation will typically not be able to look so far. Like the walnut sprout and the scuba diver, he or she will have a rather limited view at first, so he cannot be expected to know very much about complicated and far-reaching things like a political system or a whole culture or a particular tradition that goes back centuries in time. "Where am I?" questions still can be asked, and should be asked. There are indicators that can be used to evaluate an environment, even if its whole complexity is not yet transparent.
A good indicator for the sanity of an environment, and therefore its viability, is its mood level. It is not always a reliable indicator because a sweet confidence can go along with totally irrational concepts, but at least where the mood level is low, its value as an indicator is quite good. "Where is my family's mood level? Is it in a viable zone?" is a very important question to be answered for a child, because the answer to this question determines his whole future.
If as a young human being (actually, as a human being of any age) we find ourselves in a non-viable zone in any essential area of life, it will be necessary to carefully uproot ourselves and grow a new root in a more viable environment. The sequence to employ for orientation throughout a human lifetime or incarnation is always the same, whether we talk about life as a whole or about one specific life area that is perceived as separate from all others.
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Find out where you are in a certain area on the globe or in life
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Determine whether or not it is in a viable zone, and if not, relocate (change your position)
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Find out where you want to go and go there
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Anchor yourself (grow a root)
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Grow higher and wider, or in other words, evolve and expand - as these are the essential actions of life.
This sequence applies to our physical as well as to our mental and spiritual "coordinates". If it is not obvious whether we are in a viable zone or not, it may be necessary to first study materials about the upper and lower limits of the specific scale and learn what the viable zone is, and why. This is especially important if this knowledge is not part of our country's education. Most certainly it applies to the mood scale which is such an important tool in all viability related evaluations.
It is not widely known in western school systems, but it is extremely important for a child to grow up in a family whose average mood level is in the viable zone. So one of his or her first responsibilities, after having learned the language and basic skills like reading and writing, would be to learn the upper and lower limits of the mood scale and, most important, those steps in between where it is safe to communicate, to live and to plan a future.
Everything depends on the mood level of a child's parents, teachers and trainers. Their mood level decides whether the child will get empowered and can unfold his or her talents, or will get neglected or even actively oppressed, so that it will end up in a crippled state of development. So, a child who finds himself in an low mood environment, needs to try to find a better environment - be it the home of grandparents, an aunt's, an uncle's, or even a foster home. Welfare agencies should know about these things.
The average family's mood level is again a function of the whole country's average mood level, or better, the collection of subconscious agreements about how things should be done that can be called its group mind (covered for instance by Rupert Sheldrake who calls it a morphogenetic field). If in some countries it is normal to scream at each other or communicate through knives and guns, its families will reflect that, and will by the process of contagion pass it on to the next generation, whose individuals will then close the vicious circle by carrying these same patterns into the future, making sure that the country's group mind remains at the same non-viable mood level, or even gets worse.
Orientation processing is a way of raising an individual's, a family's, or even a countries mood level and other important characteristics, because once a considerable number of individuals is trained to actively leave non-viable zones of all sorts, in other words, to observe and evaluate environments and choose them according to their viability instead of simply staying where they have been dumped by some outside factors, the group mind or nested group minds of which they are a part have started to change and evolve.
Orientation processing can be used in two ways: in present time to improve non-optimum situations, and in self-help or partner training sessions in order to bring light to earlier situations, whose confusions may have never resolved, so that they still influence our present time state of mind. It makes a tremendous difference whether we slowly understand one previous confusion after the other and learn how they could or should have been resolved, or have these situations stack up on top of each other where they consume more and more precious life energy.
The maybe most important part in such processing is the study part, where we learn what important scales exist in life, how to recognize their indicators, and where their viability zones are. This knowledge alone can help to avoid many confusions, because we are warned by bad indicators long before a situation becomes so bad that it is a total confusion.
