Special Composition

The idea of Connected Systems is simply about recognizing that the world as we experience it is broken down into many, many arbitrary ways of conceptualizing how things work together or against each other. By using Focus and Adaptation in the way we experience these systems, we start to find new meaning in the Relationships that will lead us to ways to Unlearn The Self.

How to approach each of these exercises

• Play with your own perception, seeing systems in different ways, especially moving between each level of systems
  • individual parts - Notice they are discrete and autonomous in their own way - A rock is its own thing, disconnected from the other rocks in a pile.
  • two or more individual parts - How do they relate and compare and contrast; how do they work together; what connects them and separates them
  • similarities and differences between the following, noting how a system is composed and connected to other systems
    • specialized systems (cars driving in one direction together)
    • parallel systems (two lanes of cars)
    • opposing systems (two directions of traffic)
    • "ecology" - many systems that are loosely related (light poles, sidewalks and streets)

Walking

An example of multiple connected systems in an empty street with sidewalks.

There are many exercises you can do while Walking, including the following Connected Systems concepts. Depending on where you walk, you will be able to use things like

• Trees - individuals, clusters, trees of the same species, etc.
• Sidewalks and the grass next to them, parallel to the road, parallel to the sidewalk across the street
• Streetlights - alongside the sidewalks, in the grass, lighting the street
• Telephone poles - similar to the streetlights, but not the same at all
• People walking in the same direction, and in the opposite direction

Driving

Warning: Never do any Meditative or Mindful exercise if it makes you less attentive to your driving!

• Cars moving with you - all one system, but all individual cars
• Cars moving against you vs with you - two separate systems with opposing objectives, but at the same time, part of the same system of traffic flowing
• Notice other Systems and combinations of Systems, very similar to what you would notice when Walking.