Taking the Cogniventive Challenge

“Paradigm Shift” Background

“cogniventus” literally means “knowledge to come”
—it is the promise that drives the scientist to new discoveries about the world outside ourselves
—it is the anticipation that drives all human being to new discoveries about the world within ourselves
—it is the expectancy of that one life-changing insight that hovers just at the horizon of your awareness
—it is that defining moment, When Knowing Who You Are, Changes Who You Are.

As such, a Cogniventive shift and a Paradigm-shift are closely related. On this page you will move through Four All-Encompassing Questions answered at Three Different Levels of Knowledge. Moving through the relationships among these twelve bullet-pointed modules are both necessary and sufficient conditions to move from:

1. A substance-causality based model of Addiction Recovery and the Self to a process-creativity model of Addiction Recovery and the Self.
2. Simple awareness to meta-awareness through the stages of noticing, relating, and relocating.

Once this shift has been accomplished, everything that preceded it will be obsolete, and everything that follows it will be derivative.

But perhaps we should not approach this so seriously: just point & click on any of these Twelve Portals of Opportunity and try to have some fun as your mind begins think new thoughts, and your heart begins to feel new feelings.

The Cogniventive Shift
Four Challenges	Three Levels of Response
Four Challenges	ACQUIRE & APPLY Level of Information	ANALYZE AND SYNTHESIZE Level of Interaction	ORIGINATE & EVALUATE Level of Invention
WHAT IS IT?	DISEASE: Addiction is a spiritual illness that manifests in two ways: a mental obsession for the first drink and a physical phenomenon of craving that inevitably develops after taking the first drink	DELUSION: Addiction is a distortion of memory that assigns a permanent identity to an impermanent stream of desires	DUALITY: Addiction is a pathological inner struggle which traps a person indefinitely in repeating cycles of wanting to quit drinking (Never Again!) and wanting to continue. (I’ll quit tomorrow!)
WHAT CAUSES IT?	Self-centeredness generates a mental obsession for the relief alcohol brings which, after years of destructive drinking, creates a physical phenomenon of craving.	Destructive drinking represents a flight from a conflict of unknown origin in which basic instincts for self-preservation become distorted through a malfunction of memory	The duality of desire: contradictory experiences of pain and pleasure become irreversibly linked to the act of drinking—one loses the ability to consistently choose to drink or not to drink
WHAT ENDS IT?	A spiritual experience of sufficient power will temporarily break the mental obsession for the first drink. An end to the physical phenomenon of craving is currently unknown	The Passive Forgetting of Who We Think We Are requires the Knowledge of Seeing Simultaneously and the Power of Forgiveness. The Knowledge that results from Seeing Simultaneously keeps new Momentum from Ambivalent Grasping from arising; the Power that results from Forgiveness extinguishes previous Momentum from Ambivalent Grasping.	The Active Remembering of Who We Are requires the Knowledge of Seeing Directly and Power of Repentance The Knowledge that results from Seeing Directly keeps new Momentum from Fragmented Craving from arising; the Power that results from Repentance extinguishes previous Momentum from Fragmented Craving
WHAT MEANS WILL END IT?	We either attempt to dispel the mental obsession to drink with will power or try to enlist the aid of a power outside ourselves	Through a new understanding of power as self-existent in the situation—and not coming from within or without—access the power of perpetually occurring emotions	We no longer seek out more power to dispel the mental obsession to drink; we simply lower the energy required to dispel that mental obsession. We pull the plug on addiction rather than opposing it, tapping into a higher source of power, or transmute the power of perpetually occurring emotions