Perceptual Thinking and Love Languages

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Franis on February 26, 2010 at 9:58am

I have noticed that people have a very specific sequence and some hold very high qualifiers to the process of bonding. Fascinating how these "rituals of bonding" vary for people.

The most interesting experience I had in bonding and making friends was being a member and active participant for many years with a online list server that was a Dialogue group.

This group was my main motive for getting an internet email account in the mid-1990s; for learning to type and learning to use a computer, as well as learning how to form my thoughts into writing that other people could understand. David Bohm style of Dialogue encourages exploration of personal assumptions of meaning. It often involves exploration of the core experiences and stories of where meaning originates in your past, specifically. I found these deep philosophical discussions fascinating. The group still continues! (I have been a member for more than fifteen years now...)

Because of the content of the Dialogue we had been writing each other in this list server, many of us felt a sense of comradeship - or at least, people said they did. At one point in my life, I had the good fortune to make a trip overseas, where I got to meet some of these people with whom I'd been corresponding with online.

It was quite a curious experience. Some of these people, upon meeting me for the first time, treated me as if I was a stranger. Whereas others, (notably the professional writers.) just resumed the conversation where we had last left it off. Someone who met me described the experience as, "I know your mind and what you mean so well, but my body does not know your body!"

People are so very different in their "language of love," so to speak. What I mean by bonding rituals are the experiences that make people feel closer. For instance, for some people you are never close until you work with them, become introduced to their family or old friends, or until they tell you a personal secret or show you a personal short-coming and forgiveness is in order. For other people to be friends, you must have gone to school with them!

I am happy and flattered that you believe there is a common kinship that is expressed by membership of this social networking site. It's an admirable sort of "koinonia" to express this "jointly contributed gift" we can all share here.

In Hawaii, where I am living, we call it "Aloha".

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dr. Yehia A. Ibrahim on February 27, 2010 at 8:07am

Francis: You have been blessed with a great wisdom. I love your reply so much for it forms the same basis of love languages that Gary Chapman started with. What makes our love language different and our every thing different is a complex number of factors. Yet our diverse perception is the most important one. Happy belated Valentine to you and Dr. de Bono and his wonderful society.

Franis said:

I have noticed that people have a very specific sequence and some hold very high qualifiers to the process of bonding. Fascinating how these "rituals of bonding" vary for people.

The most interesting experience I had in bonding and making friends was being a member and active participant for many years with a online list server that was a Dialogue group.

This group was my main motive for getting an internet email account in the mid-1990s; for learning to type and learning to use a computer, as well as learning how to form my thoughts into writing that other people could understand. David Bohm style of Dialogue encourages exploration of personal assumptions of meaning. It often involves exploration of the core experiences and stories of where meaning originates in your past, specifically. I found these deep philosophical discussions fascinating. The group still continues! (I have been a member for more than fifteen years now...)

Because of the content of the Dialogue we had been writing each other in this list server, many of us felt a sense of comradeship - or at least, people said they did. At one point in my life, I had the good fortune to make a trip overseas, where I got to meet some of these people with whom I'd been corresponding with online.

It was quite a curious experience. Some of these people, upon meeting me for the first time, treated me as if I was a stranger. Whereas others, (notably the professional writers.) just resumed the conversation where we had last left it off. Someone who met me described the experience as, "I know your mind and what you mean so well, but my body does not know your body!"

People are so very different in their "language of love," so to speak. What I mean by bonding rituals are the experiences that make people feel closer. For instance, for some people you are never close until you work with them, become introduced to their family or old friends, or until they tell you a personal secret or show you a personal short-coming and forgiveness is in order. For other people to be friends, you must have gone to school with them!

I am happy and flattered that you believe there is a common kinship that is expressed by membership of this social networking site. It's an admirable sort of "koinonia" to express this "jointly contributed gift" we can all share here.

In Hawaii, where I am living, we call it "Aloha".

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dr. Yehia A. Ibrahim on February 27, 2010 at 10:03am

Franis: I am sorry that I have mistaken your name in my reply to your reply. It's again some shortange in my perceptual thinking proccess. Please accept my apology. Yehia

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Franis on February 28, 2010 at 9:25pm

I know I have an original name designed to trip up those who are not paying careful attention. Partly my use of my own name was designed to discern who was paying attention. You failed the test, but then you noticed it without prompting! So you passed "the test" on the second try.

Actually, my unusual name came from trading syllables with a best friend as a childhood game. My parents didn't mind my own ideas about changing my name, because they had named me only a similar name after a family member. My original name was Frances after my grandmother Fanny. I was going to have to spell "Frances" my whole life anyway, because the male form of "Francis" was more common.

Curiously, when I ran into "PO, Guide To Creative Thinking," at fifteen, thinking of myself as a creative person helped me to decide to adopt my nickname of "Franis" as my real name. It helped indicate to me immediately on meeting which people noticed the originality of the name. It also gave a shy teenager something to discuss. (You'd never know I was shy now!)

Thanks so much for your apology. Accepted!

Franis

Dr. Yehia A. Ibrahim said:

Franis: I am sorry that I have mistaken your name in my reply to your reply. It's again some shortange in my perceptual thinking proccess. Please accept my apology. Yehia

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Franis on February 28, 2010 at 9:38pm

Can you offer to us more of your diverse perceptions about the complex factors that allow you to feel bonded to fellow creative thinkers?

I would love to hear more from you on this important subject of connection and how it is found, nurtured and developed - for you personally. Perhaps representing your cultural background also?

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dr. Yehia A. Ibrahim on March 1, 2010 at 6:50am

What a great morning to start with a note from someone who is perceptually and spiritually dearest but not physically as closest. Yes, people are connected to gifts. Gifts are valuable and those who are gifted the know-how of using their mind deliberately and exrecise high mental literacy are highly valuable. When we value something or someone, we desire them, and when we desire them, they become among our purposeful fabric and motivate us to reach them either physically, emotionally, intellectually or spiritually. I have reached Dr. Edward de Bono as much as I live very close to him. I start the ladder of intimacy with intllectual consciousness. I feel that I become spiritually bonded to you in the same way. You Franis are good in addressing bonding questions. I wish I had been as good in answering your questions. Better yet, is that I am trying to exercise love to fellow humans regardless of anything but their beings. Our becoming is different and distorted. I am trying to live with this group a state of being not a state of becoming. Trying to live in a state of being requires that we purify our perceptions from all the filters of becoming. Next time we talk about how culture, every culture affects our perception and makes people different in a world that belongs to them all. Love and Blessings

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Franis on March 2, 2010 at 10:30am

You are charming to hand out such compliments! I am flattered that you believe I am articulate in addressing bonding questions.

I have witnessed that the ability to establish rapport is an ignored skill, but one that is quite handy and even necessary for communication. It involves similar skills to uncovering assumptions.

Skilled thinking practice sharpens the ability to reveal assumptions. Emotional intelligence also uses this skill of guessing about underlying assumed motives. It is a skill to bring forward motives and responses that are desired and positive, rather than feared.

Can you describe something about how your own culture affects collective perception? Can you describe a common cultural routine that shapes habitual responses?

Here's an example of what I mean that I am asking...

Lately I have been struck how my own culture defines identity in terms of what someone does for a living. So I asked myself the assumption behind the question, "What do you do?" in my culture the reason this question is often asked, is partly an attempt to categorize or think of a use for what the person can offer you or someone you know.

Recently, have been finding it much more useful to ask myself, whenever I meet someone, " What do this person and I have to offer each other in the time we have, right now?"

To answer that question for myself, I watch and listen very carefully how that person associates one subject to another in their own intuitive leaps. This tells me how that person thinks, rather than what they think.

Dr. Yehia A. Ibrahim said:

What a great morning to start with a note from someone who is perceptually and spiritually dearest but not physically as closest. Yes, people are connected to gifts. Gifts are valuable and those who are gifted the know-how of using their mind deliberately and exrecise high mental literacy are highly valuable. When we value something or someone, we desire them, and when we desire them, they become among our purposeful fabric and motivate us to reach them either physically, emotionally, intellectually or spiritually. I have reached Dr. Edward de Bono as much as I live very close to him. I start the ladder of intimacy with intellectual consciousness. I feel that I become spiritually bonded to you in the same way. You Franis are good in addressing bonding questions. I wish I had been as good in answering your questions. Better yet, is that I am trying to exercise love to fellow humans regardless of anything but their beings. Our becoming is different and distorted. I am trying to live with this group a state of being not a state of becoming. Trying to live in a state of being requires that we purify our perceptions from all the filters of becoming. Next time we talk about how culture, every culture affects our perception and makes people different in a world that belongs to them all. Love and Blessings

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dr. Yehia A. Ibrahim on March 2, 2010 at 12:05pm

Dear Franis and colleagues from the de Bono society:
I always "think" that before we were born we were in a very tight belly that I do not remember if it were really felt that tight . After I was born and every time I celebrate a new birthday for my life, I found that the world becomes tighter and tighter by programming my mind in what is common but may not be accurate or correct. Culture has become our manufacture, or our creator or even our prison. It deprives us to see through people from other parts of the world. It is unfortunate that our hardware is similar but the software is different and not always the best for our hardware on one hand, or not the best for our life on the other hand. We need a paradigm shift and this shift can happen by reading a book or communicating with someone who has no agenda except to excercise consciousness and feel living freely. I feel that my tight world becomes less tight every time I meet someone in person, online or through his written philosophy. What we can offer each other is an apetizer to the food of our mind. We need to think, communicate to prove that we exercise living.

Franis said:

You are charming to hand out such compliments! I am flattered that you believe I am articulate in addressing bonding questions.

I have witnessed that the ability to establish rapport is an ignored skill, but one that is quite handy and even necessary for communication. It involves similar skills to uncovering assumptions.

Skilled thinking practice sharpens the ability to reveal assumptions. Emotional intelligence also uses this skill of guessing about underlying assumed motives. It is a skill to bring forward motives and responses that are desired and positive, rather than feared.

Can you describe something about how your own culture affects collective perception? Can you describe a common cultural routine that shapes habitual responses?

Here's an example of what I mean that I am asking...

Lately I have been struck how my own culture defines identity in terms of what someone does for a living. So I asked myself the assumption behind the question, "What do you do?" in my culture the reason this question is often asked, is partly an attempt to categorize or think of a use for what the person can offer you or someone you know.

Recently, have been finding it much more useful to ask myself, whenever I meet someone, " What do this person and I have to offer each other in the time we have, right now?"

To answer that question for myself, I watch and listen very carefully how that person associates one subject to another in their own intuitive leaps. This tells me how that person thinks, rather than what they think.

Dr. Yehia A. Ibrahim said:

What a great morning to start with a note from someone who is perceptually and spiritually dearest but not physically as closest. Yes, people are connected to gifts. Gifts are valuable and those who are gifted the know-how of using their mind deliberately and exrecise high mental literacy are highly valuable. When we value something or someone, we desire them, and when we desire them, they become among our purposeful fabric and motivate us to reach them either physically, emotionally, intellectually or spiritually. I have reached Dr. Edward de Bono as much as I live very close to him. I start the ladder of intimacy with intellectual consciousness. I feel that I become spiritually bonded to you in the same way. You Franis are good in addressing bonding questions. I wish I had been as good in answering your questions. Better yet, is that I am trying to exercise love to fellow humans regardless of anything but their beings. Our becoming is different and distorted. I am trying to live with this group a state of being not a state of becoming. Trying to live in a state of being requires that we purify our perceptions from all the filters of becoming. Next time we talk about how culture, every culture affects our perception and makes people different in a world that belongs to them all. Love and Blessings

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Zee on April 27, 2010 at 12:59pm

An inspiring conversation and one close to my heart.

Dr Yehia, I enjoyed your comment : I always "think" that before we were born we were in a very tight belly that I do not remember if it were really felt that tight . After I was born and every time I celebrate a new birthday for my life, I found that the world becomes tighter and tighter by programming my mind in what is common but may not be accurate or correct.

It is interesting how this happens as we move through the experiences of life and create our own personal languages of meaning. I don't mean the languages we speak such as English of French or Greek, for example but rather our own individual language that happens within us causing perceptual meaning.
I also find it ironic because as we "leave the tight belly" we are free from perception in some way.

I was chatting to two of my friends who are teachers and teach little children between the ages of 3-6 years. They both mentioned how refreshing it is, because it is a place of openess, honesty ,acceptance of all views,love, no inhibitions, fun and laughter. They mentioned how they learn more from the wisdom of children and feel freer and less limited in the space of interacting and teaching children. I find it ironic because we were all there once, and , although we have very different backgrounds we start with being comfortable with bonding, have open minds and unlimited curiosity. We start in a place of "no meaning" almost ;and then build meaning as we go along. It is almost the state of being as opposed to becoming,that you mention

What I find so powerful about the "game" of 6 thinking hats is that it takes us back there :-)

Franis, it's so interesting what you say about your culture and being defined by what one does for a living;I can relate to that, and the skill of being aware of how one thinks.

I have seen that the interpretation of perception lies more in the understanding and translation of our own "languages" first or our own translation of meaning,i.e. how many people are aware of their love language, for example? :-)

▶ Reply to This