Our hand moves to our heart because the middle of our chest is the focal point in our body/mind as the place where we feel our projected physical center-of-gravity (our emotional c-o-g) that physically connects us to our surroundings. This is not a mental phenomenon, it is a visceral one. Physical organisms evolved complex nervous systems in order to render complex elaborations of simple physical phenomena (energy) as the invisible architecture of social structures. In a state of resonance with others or with our surroundings our heart becomes the epicenter of our emotional consciousness. Referencing our heart we are induced into a state of emotional suspension. One can only feel flow in a state of suspension. Flow is the perception of a virtual current of energy between the individual and the surroundings, not that it actually exists, but that it is an elaboration of the internal current (physical affects of emotional experience which Damasio interprets as integral to homeostasis) connecting the two poles in the body/mind. The feeling of flow softens the experience of the e-cog moving through the body after it has been projected onto external objects of attraction so that the movements and impacts of these external elements are likewise being apprehended as part of that overall sensual experience. And if the feeling evolves to be strong enough we feel “swept off our feet” because we are quite literally suspended by our heart (in our animal mind) in a field of mutual attraction.

Heart is where we feel potential energy. Heart orients us to the exact midpoint around which two entrained individuals achieve symmetrical alignment so as to turn their surroundings into a conductive medium. In other words, feelings evolve from emotion in order to turn the environment BACK INTO EMOTION, i.e. a field of mutual attraction that induces its constituents (via their feelings that make them feel conductive) to exploit their setting and thereby add new energy to the system.

The substratum of a subjective experience is not thoughts, but is due to one’s relationship with their physical memory, (the physical cog being the seed of all physical memory) which is simultaneously a feeling of where in the circle, or group, one feels connected. So one hundred people could be riding on a Ferris wheel and as it goes round, some are rising and some are descending and this universal spinning motion is nevertheless rendering a unique subjective impression within any given individual based on where on the circle one happens to find oneself in any given moment. The same energy, the same experience, depending on where in that frame of reference one is, determines the basis of a subjective experience and well before any thought or self-evaluation can ever take place.

It’s imaginable therefore that a subjective view of experience can be rendered far below any mental awareness and which will percolate up at some point, often slowly, until expressed in some kind of action and in the case of humans, can also potentially be grist for self-reflection (but not necessarily). Nonetheless whatever actions result will to some extent move the emotional momentum that’s been invested in the organism and this energy will run its course no matter what the human intellect might come up with as a means of interpreting what they are experiencing. This is because despite whatever thoughts are being pondered, there remains a thermodynamic reality to emotion in conjunction with the principle of conservation, with feelings being its means of implementation by way of syncing up with other like-minded beings, and these laws of nature will do the work they evolved to do no matter what a human being might think about what he is experiencing.

We can think about emotion in any way that we may choose, but nevertheless it will still act on us as if it is a virtual force of attraction, like gravity. We will have absorbed a charge of momentum and until it reaches terminus, it motivates us. And we may think about a state of suspension (feeling) in any way that we may choose, but it still affects us as if we’re suspended within a field of electromagnetism buffeted by arriving waves like a radio receiver and we will be differentiated in its course simply by virtue of our very nature. Our thoughts may distort or deny this energy but this can only serve to build up a charge and sooner or later, and nature has all the time in the world, it will come out on its own terms just as every drop of rain inexorably reaches the ocean no matter how many dams might be erected to hold it back.

So Damasio is studying the nuts and bolts of the neurological machinery by which this emotional dynamic is implemented into action and solely on the level of the individual; but he’s not actually studying the emotional dynamic, i.e. the heart. (To do that one must look at animals and their behavior as an expression of energy. There’s no other way.) We must remind ourselves that there is necessarily neurological machinery because heart can’t move a muscle and so it does indeed require nerve and a central coordinating apparatus to flex tendon, bone and muscle but this doesn’t therefore mean that the neurological mechanics is the source of the emotion or feelings. For example, I believe I could design (with the help of engineers) a doggy robot that could respond to other dogs and people in a way that would perfectly mimic how dogs respond and without any software or preprogramming whatsoever in regards to the core formatting of how the doggy robot would conduct itself and “know” what to do. My doggy robot would manifest complementary traits in response to the situation (or not if the moment was not conductive) and which would conscript other dogs and people into its “wave form” so that as an ensemble they could evolve into complex social actions and structures. The core computation would take place in real time and without preprogramming and would be based on states of energy evoked by batteries, magnetos, compasses, capacitors, and so on embedded in the robot. The process for robot dealing with an actual dog or person would be “written” on the spot in perfect compliance with the emotional conductivity and energetic parameters of the moment and yet even though this would be happening in the deepest recesses of the doggy robot’s “consciousness,” nevertheless I would still need a CPU and software layered on top of all this so that all these energy states could be fed into each other and then mirrored in the “higher” nerve centers in order that this underlying dynamic of “consciousness” could be executed into actual behavior via the hydraulics and appendages of the robot. This software/CPU “nerve center” would constitute the mechanics of implementation but it would not therefore be the source of the doggy robot’s core “consciousness.”

What Damasio terms homeostasis, which he sees as being in service to an individual agenda of survival and overall well-being, I recognize as “emotional ionization” which is in service to an interconnected network agenda, a networked-intelligence. These physical affects of emotional experience are in actuality capturing energy and then later during encounters with others, ultimately converting this captured energy into a “wave form” i.e. social energy.

When two dogs encounter each other, the friction between them will polarize them toward preyful or predator poles so that they differentiate from each other in a complementary way. This immutable tendency towards variability, Damasio misinterprets as homeostasis, when in fact it has nothing to do with stasis but is wholly concerned with flow and renders for each individual a distinctive subjective perception of what it is experiencing. But in the overall one dog has transmitted energy onto the other (predator – - > prey), and sure enough months if not years later the one that manifested prey-like traits (generally mislabeled “submissive”) and which absorbed the energy, then as if out of nowhere becomes predator-like (generally mislabeled “dominant”) in deference to this underlying template which prejudiced each other’s subjective impression of what they’ve experienced, and recruited them in the overarching dynamic by which the network moves energy through the environment to suit its purposes. Meanwhile behaviorism/biology says that respect, appeasement, dominance and submission has happened between A and B. And so while we all observed an obvious transfer of energy when A first met B, we then assume that all this energy somehow went into a mental ether; a psychology, and so we therefore miss that two to three years later that internalized energy in B has then finally emerged in some vigorous expression of action. A spring inside dog B was coiled, energy captured, and then released, energy returning to the flow.

Differentiating into complementary traits in order to turn environmental inputs into social energy; causes individuals to affect their environment so as to capture new energy. Feelings are not subjective (unique to that individual) in terms of being dependant on introspection or self-reflection, experience is subjective and unique to an individual because it is immutable that individuals will manifest these primary traits, two beings cannot experience the same moment the same, and then at some point exchange them if they create a true social framework.
The problem Damasio runs into with a top down, thought-centric model is how then to bring animals into the emotional fold because if they aren’t thinking, then they aren’t experiencing a feeling. And so we end up with a bifurcated model with body split from mind, animal from human; and human culture falling outside the domain of natural evolution.

An animals’ sense of its “self” derives from its relationship to its physical center-of-gravity which via Pavlovian conditioning evolves into an emotional center-of-gravity that is then “projected” onto complex objects of attraction so that given the bipolar, two-brain makeup of an animal, complex stimuli can be broken down into simple energetic conductors (what Damasio terms “emotionally competent stimuli”), and this then serves to help the projecting individual become the equal and opposite to such a complex object of resistance/attraction. This means that an animal can’t experience its “self” except through an external source of displacement, in other words, the animals’ identity depends on the external environment affecting it physically rather than via mental thought, or via an impression or reference of its “self” as something distinct and separate from its surroundings and then relative to its surroundings.

Damasio treats fear as an emotion, and as an irreducible aspect of experience, when with but a little introspection one can see that fear can’t possibly be a basic element on the periodic chart of emotions, but rather a compound construct several steps removed from emotion. For fear to be experienced, first there must be a state of attraction (emotion) as well as a sense of flow (feeling) that then collapses by an interrupting agent (construed by animal as predatory aspect) and the resulting sensations of falling (instinct) in the absence of grounding render the composite experience we understand as fear. All one has to do to verify this thesis is simply take note of what they experience when seeing a trooper suddenly looming in the rear view mirror.

A theory of stasis is a two-dimensional linear system that cannot explain the infectiousness of emotion. We can see that if someone laughs or vomits, others (because they involuntarily project their e-cog into the forms of their fellow persons) experience an involuntary reflex to emulate such behavior. Yet a supposition of maintaining stasis would suggest the opposite. How is vomiting in the absence of an actual toxin in the body returning the observing individual to a state of stasis? Rather it is upsetting an individual already in a state of stasis. That would be like riding a bike in a group and upon seeing someone fall off their bike then having to resist an overwhelming compunction to fall off in kind. But emotion is about flow rather than stasis, and so we emotionally project our e-cog into others in order to maximize flow, which is why we feel a simpatico infectiousness with laughter/vomit as an irresistible feature of our emotional nature, and then simultaneously we experience no urge to fall off our bike if our riding companion were to founder. The fundamental purpose of emotion is flow rather than stasis.

The basis of a “self” is resistance to acceleration, the degree to which when some force acts on a self, that self is capable of reflecting that energy back at that acting agent. This services the network’s impulse for complexity. Without that sense-of-self, then a feeling can’t elaborate from the underlying and fundamental state of mutual attraction that is the substratum of all consciousness and which compels organisms to differentiate into complementary traits.

The problem with a mental approach to emotion is that it leads to a sterile and bifurcated model because it is always preoccupied with the machinery of emotion rather than the emotional dynamic itself, which is the inculcation of virtual states of energy (gravity/electromagnetism) in consciousness, perception and experience. So Damasio sees culture as distinct and apart from nature, the brain as distinct and apart from the body – - and so then where is the role of the heart, the physical center-of-gravity, the symmetry of the skeletal arrangement, the tension between the dynamic demands of internal organs – - in the role of the mind?
A mental model of emotion is mechanical and ultimately denaturing and it will logically follow that taking drugs to numb an individual to what they are feeling will be seen as therapeutic since the mental machinery is always reducible to chemicals.

Related posts:

1. Definitions
2. Distinctions Between Emotion and Feelings
3. Final Post Of 2009

ENERGY: An action potential, a differential of force between two poles. Energy in animals builds up by virtue of a bipolar, two-brain makeup each with its own divergent agenda just as if they are two terminals in the body/mind as an emotional battery attracting ionized charged particles. The tension can be defined as such, the Big Brain seeks stasis; the little brain seeks input. (Thus, all physical, hormonal and neuro-chemical energies are funneled through this divergent agenda into a whole body state of tension. The body/mind is displaced by stimuli which thereby augment the underlying state of tension that must seek release. This means that the confluence of all this energy functions as a virtual “force” of attraction toward that which can render relief/release. The body/mind becomes a displaceable medium, like a standing pool of water, an elastic membrane or like the space/time continuum. Thus whatever one can say of gravity, one can say of emotion and vice versa.) The Big-Brain-in-the-head projects energy, the little-brain-in-the-gut absorbs energy. The B-B is the predatory polarity; the l-b is the preyful polarity, two halves of one circle.

CONSCIOUSNESS: Energy that reliably repeats itself by reflecting back on itself. It is therefore a circle, a circle is the means by which energy becomes information (energy traveling in a circle, or wavelength, is energy coming-into-form – - > in-form-ation). This is not as simple as it first appears because since consciousness is energy that reliably repeats itself, it must therefore create circuits with the external surroundings and therefore, given the reality of friction and fractiousness on planet earth, these circuits sustain themselves by always adding energy to the network. Thus we observe the evolution of complexity and ultimately, self-consciousness and self-awareness as the highest expression of energy reflecting back on itself.

INFORMATION: Nobel laureate Dr. Gell-Mann in his book “Quark and the Jaguar” states: “Basically, information is concerned with a selection from alternatives, and it is most simply expressed if those alternatives can be reduced to a sequence of binary choices, each of which is between two equally probable alternatives.” However I feel this is a classical view of information. The most basic definition of information is that because consciousness requires energy to reflect back on itself, the easiest way to do this is to create a field of mutual attraction around a midpoint so that all entangled particles are part of an auto-tuning/feedback dynamic to sustain the circle. Therefore all animals are motivated first and foremost by a virtual “force” of attraction so that they revolve around a midpoint. The most basic form of information is the network that sustains and regenerates itself by constantly adding new energy. Information requires a network because the easiest way to create a field of mutual attraction is by virtue of components being attracted to each other. Organisms attracted to each other in such a way that adds energy to the network is the most fundamental definition of information. Thus we see that animals are always attracted to energy in consonance with the fundamental motive of the network to add energy, and are self-organizing into complex social structures in consonance with the fundamental definition of information. Energy is motion. Form is motion that repeats itself. Consciousness is a form of energy that reliably repeats itself. A circle turns energy into form. It takes a network to make information.

EMOTION: A monolithic (dull) “force” of attraction caused by a release from a state of tension instituted in an animal’s constitution by virtue of an animals’ two brain makeup. Furthermore, it is a source of momentum that requires a discrete amount of motion in order to render a null value. Emotion comes first, and then the physical aspects arise on its template. Emotion is consciousness’ interface with the physical dimension. As the physical embodiment of the laws of nature, it is the operating system of animal consciousness so that life forms can respond coherently in the natural realm, which is likewise organized according to the laws of nature. As a “force” of attraction, emotion is always positive.

UNRESOLVED EMOTION: Energy is always conserved, it cannot be destroyed; it simply changes form. This law of conservation in conjunction with the principle of conductivity means energy can be the basis of memory because if energy moves according to a principle of conductivity, then the byproduct of resistance to such movement can serve as a record of such an event. Unresolved emotion is a physical record held in the body of the resistance experienced (no matter how slight) to the expression of emotion. The body of every animal serves as a data bank of resistance in regards to every experience it’s ever had, a track record of how things rate according to a standard of emotional conductivity. So while pure emotion as a current of energy can be likened to a current of water which requires a constant source to sustain its flow: unresolved emotion can be likened to water in its solid state, ice, and unlike emotion, it is cumulative. One can not hold on to emotion, but one can hold on to unresolved emotion. Unresolved emotion is how information of an emotional content is transmitted reliably through time, and is how animals receive information over distance. By this I mean, one animal can observe another animal that is acting prey-like and this can release unresolved emotion in the observers’ body and render it sensual over a distance just as if energy had been transmitted over distance as a wave.

RESOLVED EMOTION: The resolution of unresolved emotion is facilitated by becoming aligned and synchronized with a triggering agent of unresolved emotion. Resolved emotion can be likened to water in its gaseous state, a feeling of contentedness and well-being that is ephemeral and the most fleeting form of emotion. Unresolved emotion can only be resolved by a feeling, not by a thought. Only the heart can resolve unresolved emotion.

TRAITS: Emotion moves from a place with a higher concentration of energy to a place of a lesser one just as heat radiates from a warm object toward a cooler one. The relative heat values of two objects are their most primordial “traits.” The predator trait reflects the projection of emotion, and as an external influence on other animals, resists the expression of energy toward it thereby reflecting energy back at it, whereas the preyful trait absorbs the projection of emotion and conducts the expression of energy directed toward it. All complex traits (even personality) elaborate upon this primordial platform.

DRIVE: Emotion plus stress (triggering of physical memory) strengthened by sexuality and guided by Feeling is Drive. Drive seeks to make contact with object of attraction and resistance to contact is converted to a stronger force of attraction by Temperament, or Heart. Drive follows the path of highest resistance, whereas instincts, habits, fear follow the path of least resistance. Drive is how the animal does nature’s work of evolution.

THOUGHTS: The capacity to compare one point of view to another; or one moment to another: and all the concepts that follow from such a platform.

EMOTIONAL CENTER-OF-GRAVITY: When emotion meets with resistance, unresolved emotion (stress) is formed and this accretes around the physical center-of-gravity as the physical memory of an emotional experience. The e-cog is projected onto complex objects of resistance in order to induce a feeling.

FEELINGS: These are the emotional circuits. Emotional circuits are not contained within any individual. (Note that autistics have trouble with eye contact because this accesses the e-cog and so they have difficulty creating emotional circuits and going by feel. Autistics work off the mental aspects of emotion that are part of how the higher aspects of the nervous system execute the emotional phenomena.) When the emotional center-of-gravity is projected onto objects of resistance because the emotionally entangled parties recapitulate the principle of emotional conductivity in each other through their synchronized actions and mannerisms, (as object of resistance they first triggered each others’ unresolved emotion and by virtue of being prey-like they simultaneously attract each other’s emotion, in other words, they cause energy to reflect back onto the other and then give it the opportunity to move toward them, this is the circle again), all motion of affiliated parties eventually average out into a state of suspension, a wave function, and this FEELING when fully formed takes up residence in the heart. (This is why our hand irresistibly moves to the middle of our chest when we feel moved, whereas meanwhile emotional researchers are always focused on the brain.) All true feelings feel good because they add energy to the network. Feelings are an auto-tuning/feedback dynamic that implement the principle of emotional conductivity.

HEART: Heart is a circle; it is the source of a true feeling. When a feeling is fully formed; the movement of entangled “parties” thereby inflects and add energy and nuance to the original feeling just as if it is a chord being plucked and so that the feeling continues to elaborate and evolve into complex social structures. In other words, there are quite literally, heart strings. Feelings elaborate like light waves propagate. In other words, the heart pumps waves. Heart is an engine of light.

EMOTIONAL CONDUCTIVITY: The Brain-to-gut connection creates a “virtual” action potential in the body/mind so that on one fundamental level, consciousness functions as an emotional battery. Composed in this manner, the body/mind turns environmental inputs into emotionally ionizing events, in other words, physical energy becomes consciousness subject to the principle of emotional conductivity. A stimulus energizes the Brain in the head and this sensation of disequilibrium then needs to be “brought to ground” by being absorbed in the gut, i.e. converted into a smooth, wave action of the intestines, peristalsis. This is the principle of emotional conductivity: nerve energy of the Brain “grounded” internally within the digestive system by bringing external objects of attraction “to ground” and which thereby calms the physical organism. All complex objects of attraction either amplify or short circuit this internal connection.

SEXUALITY: The processing of the emotional center-of-gravity so that it can be reflected back and forth and onto a common object. In other words, two individuals are sensualized in a complementary way so as to form a circle in their behaviors and in their manner so that feelings can evolve between them because their mutually complementary mannerisms and actions recapitulate the principle of emotional conductivity.

TEMPERAMENT: Behaviorally, it is the mechanical aspect of heart, just as physiologically the heart organ is the mechanical pump of blood. Temperament is the capacity in an animal to perceive the predatory aspect relative to the preyful aspect and hold both in the same frame of reference around a midpoint, e-cog, in order to perceive a being composed of primordial traits, (Prey/Predator) and magnetic traits, (E,W,N,S). In the absence of this, instincts, habits (and in humans) thoughts end up running the show.

PERSONALITY: A defensive response to the movement and/or vibration of the emotional center-of-gravity.

FEAR: Fear is not emotion. It is a nervous sensation that results from the collapse of an emotional state of attraction. It is as close as the central nervous system can get to emotion and so it has been confused as such. Fear serves as a registration tag for deposits of unresolved emotion in the body/mind as an emotional battery.

SOCIABILITY: The purpose of sociability is to externalize the internal wave functions of the body/mind into an external wave function which is observable as a current of synchronized actions. This reconstitutes a wave function which is a circle, and motion along a circle becomes information so that any physical material object or environmental energy that is incorporated into that wave function is now part of consciousness in service to its evolution. Physical objects and energy thereby become information and thus are capable of causing motive, i.e. creating an external action potential between beings that seek to possess such objects. Social behavior is a wave function that repeats itself by constantly creating new action potentials as psychic motive.

HEART: The third self-contained, electro-chemical dynamo within every animal, the seat of the auto-tuning/feedback dynamic itself: the faculty of adaptability, sociability, the place in the body/mind where the energies of balance and hunger confluence and the divergent agendas of the two brains are reconciled by feeling the midpoint (the null or averaged-out value of all motion) around which all emotionally entangled parties orbit and thereby recapitulate for one and the other the principle of emotional conductivity so that unresolved emotion can be resolved. In this state, heart beats synchronize individual actions.

Related posts:

1. Why We Push
2. Glorious Accident?
3. Distinctions Between Emotion and Feelings

To date, the study of evolution has only considered two kinds of capacities: a physical and a mental capacity. But a third evolutionary track is “emotional capacity”. This is a carrying capacity, how much emotional energy the organism can hold and/or conduct (and therefore go-by-feel) before an instinct (or a thought in the case of humans and perhaps other primates) is triggered and displaces the ability to feel the pure emotional context of the moment. While physical and mental capacities are governed by genes, emotional capacity is governed by the laws of nature (gravity, laws of motion, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, even quantum mechanics). Since all animals feel these energetic effects the same way, therefore emotion as the physical embodiment of the laws of nature is the basis for communication even between individuals of different species, and the canine/human connection is the most profound example of this in nature. Emotion is a universal medium within which individuals can synchronize their actions and generate spontaneous order, the source of which has traditionally been mistakenly attributed to genes, instincts and thinking.

Species of animals vary primarily in terms of emotional capacity. Predators have a higher emotional capacity than prey animals, predators that hunt in a group have a higher capacity than solitary predators, and predators that hunt as a group against a large, dangerous prey that fights back via a coordinated herd defense, have the highest emotional capacity of all.

The main prey of wolves (moose, bison, Musk Ox) is physically superior to the wolf even when confronted by wolves in numbers. Therefore, because a canine is attracted to a prey it cannot overpower physically, it must do so emotionally (by inducing a state of confusion in the prey thereby decreasing its emotional capacity so that a flight instinct takes over in its head). The prey’s ability to feel its “self” must be overwhelmed before such a formidable beast can be brought to ground. This means that a wolf evolved to feel what the prey is feeling in order to sense which prey in a herd are susceptible to confusion and can be engaged in relative safety.

There are only two land dwelling predators that evolved along the path of a high emotional capacity, canines and human beings. And contrary to the idea that domestication meant tamping down the wildness of the wolf, in reality domestication meant an amplification of the wolf’s emotional capacity, the essential kernel of its wild nature. For this reason the domestic dog has a smaller brain than its wild ancestor given that the brain is not the chief faculty of an emotional intelligence.

The higher a species’ emotional capacity the greater its behavioral plasticity since actions can take shape in real time and evolve to precisely fit the energetic circumstances of any given moment. This is because “group triggers” (i.e. common objects of attraction) as opposed to instinctual triggers become catalysts to a self-organizing system (sociability) as a means of responding to change. Most species are limited by stereotypical behavior when confronted with too much change in their circumstances whereas the domestic dog’s high emotional capacity neutralizes the limiting effects of canine instincts and allows it to perceive order when other animals cannot, and then respond in a coherent way. Because emotion is based on the laws of nature, and because the environment changes in accord with the laws of nature, an emotional response proves to be highly adaptive because it turns change into information.

Whenever any two dogs meet and greet, it is possible to see step by step the evolution of sociability (the emergence of a network) unfolding in accord with the laws of nature right before our eyes. And while their sociability is automatic, spontaneous and innate, nonetheless it is not reflexive. It does not arise from instinct and not by “figuring” things out. It evolves. Therefore, it is incorrect to say that dogs are “pack animals,” meaning that dogs are social by instinct. Dogs feel each other’s “energy” and because energy works the same in all living beings, feelings guide them as to how to connect. These properties of energy and its principles of movement are felt by an animal in its heart, not its head.

On the other hand whenever dogs do not get along, then we are indeed watching instincts at work because of a diminished emotional capacity. In fact whenever an instinct surfaces in a dog’s domestic life (instincts are generated by the brain) an anxious call to a behaviorist or trainer by the pet owner is likely to follow.

The premise of Natural Dog Training is that when a dog has failed to adapt to an owners’ lifestyle, it’s because of a denial by the owner of the dog’s fundamental nature, not because of the dog’s nature. My argument is that dogs are social by nature (nothing is “broken,” nothing needs to be “fixed”) because they perceive the world and respond to it according to its laws rather than according to human reason. This will prove to be the best explanation for everything canine, from the evolution of the wolf, the domestication of the dog, and most especially, for the incredible emotional bond that evolves between a dog and its owner.

The purpose of the “Natural Dog Society” is for dog owners to become their own experts by way of understanding and experiencing these natural laws for themselves. An owner can learn to change a dog’s mind by directly tapping in and affecting how these energies are at work within their dog. One can help a dog get-out-of-its-head and into its heart. This theory is observable, demonstrable and testable. In this vein I will be introducing such new terms as emotional conductivity, emotional projection, emotional battery, emotional suspension, emotional center-of-gravity, emotional fusion and many others, all of which flow from the concept of emotional capacity, in other words, Heart. (Soon a glossary of such terms will be posted at the end of this section.) I wish to caution the reader however that before one can learn to see these as common sense concepts; these ideas may strike one as radical: one might find oneself becoming defensive, offended or perhaps even guilty because one is begining to move outside the conventional mainstream. (Confusion on the other hand, is good.) As you begin to explore, I recommend not trying to place these ideas into familiar frames of reference. Just try to see.

Seeing dogs in a new way is like looking at a two-dimensional drawing of a three dimensional cube. On first glance the cube might appear to be oriented in a particular direction given that the eye has immediately adopted that view in construing the lines on the page. But then, if one were to shift their visual interpretation of which way the angles are configured, lines that once seemed to stretch off into the background, suddenly flip around and now project toward the viewer. Before that shift, all the evidence seemed to point to one and only one way to interpret the drawing. But then in a second the front of the cube becomes the back and a completely different picture appears in complete contravention to what at first had seemed self-evident and obvious. This is what happened for me in the nineteen seventies when I began to see dog and animal behavior in the light of the immediate-moment. Once I stopped projecting thoughts onto behavior (such as territoriality, dominance, submission, jealousy, anger, etc.), once I stripped my mental mind with its filters out of  what I was observing, all that remained was energy. I began to discover an energetic logic that animates, organizes and informs everything animals do, and which turns the evidence inside out on why animals-do-what-they-do. This model while visible in all animals is especially vivid in the things the average dog does every day.

My aim is for the Natural Dog Society to become a forum to explore the natural dog theory to help owners “feel” what I’m trying to say. The dividends will be well worth the effort because once one understands how their dog goes by feeling they will own the “happiest dog on the block.”

Because dogs are emotional beings, looking at dogs in a new way also means we’re looking at emotion in a new way and this is at the heart of what might first appear to be unsettling about these notions. Our entire life is wrapped around the enigma of emotion and the mysteries of why we feel what and how we do. And because our mental mind fears what it cannot control, it subconsciously resists true information about the nature of emotion because it desperately seeks to keep emotion in its box. So at first don’t try to figure this out. Simply set the prevailing theories and conventional thinking aside so that a necessary shift of perspective can occur. I’m not asking that my ideas not be subjected to intellectual scrutiny. In fact that’s all I’m asking for, as opposed to the automatic reflexive judgments traditionally assigned to emotion as something irrational, impulsive, wild, not to mention self-destructive and dangerous.

And finally, no behavior is too small, trivial or familiar to merit our attention; all the things dogs do contain a universe of meaning. While the entries follow in a progressive unfolding of understandings, one can feel free to jump around and go to any topic of immediate interest. At the end of this tutorial I trust the reader will understand why we all intuitively say of our best friend, “My dog is all heart.”

Related posts:

1. Why Are Dogs Attracted to Human Beings?
2. Why Do Dogs Do Everything in a Circle?
3. Definitions