Morality is the ultimate social conditioner. Designed to steer us away from conflict, and negative emotional responses that can turn into regrettable actions and social unrest.

Skills take time, for everything else, we have rules
We teach our children right from wrong because it takes many more years of experience to understand cause and effect.

It takes us about a year to learn,(and build the muscle) how to interact with gravity and walk on 2 legs.

Specific skills, talents, trades or arts take many more years to learn.

The moral of the story
How to feel, read, hide, display and even fake emotions is a skill that some, simply never learn. It is the hardest of all, because it requires self knowledge. For that we need to go below our fear and find out who we are minus the external and voluntary conditioning we have picked up.

Few people complete that journey, and even today, we still use their stories to teach about emotions. We use the stories they left to us because they contain parables that have "morals" to them.

To re-cap, it takes so long to learn from experiences and many of the most impactful are un planned for.
So we use short cuts to pass on lessons in advance, if these are not experienced then the only texture we can lend to them is via mnemonics or “memory aids”.

Emotion as the super mnemonic
Emotions are the most powerful mnemonic aids, because they are real chemical and tension based events within our bodies. In order for us to feel the emotion, we must empathise or identify with the one issuing the emotion.

Teachers use stories with characters and situations we can identify with, this engages with us via our empathy. We literally resonate or are moved by them. We tense and feel the fear, horror and pain of the characters in the story, we open up and laugh, even share their victories. We tune our bodies with the ancient biological language of emotion.

We learn to relax and contract based upon memories that have powerful emotional triggers anchored within our tissues. This is in no way the same as when we learned to walk, for to do that, we remained focused on the forces acting on our bodies, and how to use leverage to overcome it.

What's with all the thinking?
Skills are based on experiencing reality in many varied and sensation rich situations that provide context in relation to to other forces and objects in motion. Skills continue to grow with practice so long as we remain capable of sensitive movement.

Rote learned pattern memories, including "correct Moral behaviour" may lack experience. Yet they remain anchored with the emotions that convinced us to agree and store them as "needed" by our person.

Their only reality is the emotional "action potential",( tension) created by the stories used to store them, as such they tend to clash with reality and may upset us more than they help us.

Trying to make sense of stories that are nonsensical, (stored based on emotion rather than experience) may be a large part of the reason we find it so hard to stop thinking. Lets explore that one later, now that this series provides some background for reference.

Trust
The systems we have are the reality of this time. The more we can see them, understand and recognise when to ignore them. The more we can begin to trust reality without leaning so much on stories, for comfort.

Coming from the opinion, that the old system, or that morality is bad - is just another manifestation of morality - of using stories and both identifying with and assigning roles within the stories.
This leads back to memory based reactivity and the loss once again of real empathy and possibility of real skill and graceful action.

Role of Ritual and Ceremony
Ideally we may start with stories, such as "be good and Santa will reward you" and swap them out as we grow up, such as.."stay alert, move well and you will need for no thing".

I guess this is what the ancient teachings were trying for, before we wrote it all down as "the rules of conduct" lol..

The stories are the fences that we replace, expand and eventually remove when we gain direct personal resononce and inter-personal trust. (I am guessing that the role of ceremony was to come together and relax together, to offer the gift of acceptance and find that is the only way to receive it).

Morality Police
People are traumatised, they do terrible things to themselves, each other and to the habitats we must share.

The more scared we are, the more we seek to control. The more we control the movement of resources within our habitats and justify that with story. The more we will need to continue using stories to recruit new wardens, to prevent nature from reverting.

Its all gotten a little messy, as such, we do require governance and policing, I wish it were otherwise, but the only way to move in that direction is to heal ourselves so that we stop wounding others. Reduce the controlling of that that which we do not even understand.

How to set governance, what is right, who has the right to decide?
Perhaps to find these answers we should learn more about emotions and the habitat we emerged from?
How do people train dolphins? (not that I am into the whole captivity thing)
That may be how we dream of raising our children, but life is way too scary, complicated and busy.

To build trust, we need to experience results that affirm and re affirm. From this, understanding may arise.
Using stories laden with emotion to get people to react without questioning, is a recipe for more trauma, less understanding and more need for morality police.

Focused movement and the realisation of what we actually "need" right now, is an on-ramp into freedom.. when we are ready to return from our little "head trips", it awaits, so I am told...

Thank you for reading

=8-P

Wisdom as Action Series
Act 1 - Do you remember?
Act 2 - What is Love?
Act 3 - Feeling Swell
Act 4 - Bound to be Free
Act 5 - Trust Issues
Act 6 - Knowledge
Act 7 - All you Desire
Act 8 - Virtue Reality
Act 9 - @tension
Act 10 - Rote learning vs Understanding