As a Karateka that has faced many of the adversaries of human consciousness in life, one that has learned to use contemplation and mindfulness as his allies, there must be a term that is made to accurately reference those adversaries. The chosen term, then - "Infinity" - from here on out will refer to the reoccurring, and often seemingly fixated and hard-to-stop, occurrence of psychosis, depression, mania, imbalance in personality/ies, and/or other problems of the mind. Onward, then, to interrupt, limit, or rule out the occurrence of Infinity, or to treat it when already present, for most people yang-mind must be there to chart many or some of the beginning, middle, and ending steps in the use of any effective tools of that mind. In other words, that is, deliberate things, like making rules, applying discipline, simplifying everyday processes, building the happy medium - all are very useful and important Yang tools.

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For example, Yang mind is one of the things that enables human consciousness to function in the first place. Many valued things have come into being because of the deliberation of thought into action – and this is true in the conscious mind of anyone that has had time to generate some depth and wisdom in life. For an instance of this thought deliberation, there exist techniques that make smaller measures of or healthy instances of Infinity useful, tricks that turn negatives into positives which, in turn, serve the thinker. More specifically, then, doubt, for only one archetypal experience and one tool, is known to test faith and to keep faith alive - thus embodying one type of technique that often happens to be of the yin family. But more to the point, and unexpectedly and oddly, in such an instance there is an important and esoteric, though ultimately also simple, phenomenon that appears: “Layering.” Generally, then, this particular style of deliberation occurs before, during, or after contemplation, which is so often directed at imperfections of thought or feeling, or from motivations, habits, or disciplines to otherwise alter experience. Thus, below, the reader will find a discussion of Layering of the conscious variety - that is the conscious vs. the deeper variety. (On other pages in the website, its relevance to, combination with, and transformation into Deeper Layering is mentioned and discussed.

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To start, then, the characterizations and definitions that describe and understand a string of thought and its contents, including its feeling or sensory parts - like observation and analysis - can penetrate those strings and their individual members and can be used to make one or more interruptions, assumptions, and other structuring items along the course of almost any modification or creation process. Such alterations are not necessarily valuable in themselves, however, so much as they are when they are made to have some usefulness, when they are strategically placed or when they arise and happen to have this kind of value. An essential point of, perhaps, the greatest value of thought-strings in Layering is when these modifications are from intuition or feeling alone, which is why the family, Yin, is as important as important as the Yang, to put it mildly. As Bruce Lee says to his kung-fu pupil in one of his movies, "Don't think...Feeel, or you'll miss all of that Heavenly glory." And there is Another potentially great value of string modification, too. This is when its usefulness is in enabling a string to continue past traps, hesitations, and other flaws of thought or feeling.

 

As the reader may see, then, the word, Layering, has been chosen because there is some complexity that happens and exists, maybe even throughout most modification exercises. The effort or energy (if you will) can work on multiple levels at one time, or can flow throughout, stopping here and there. And, thus, Resonance, as discussed elsewhere in the site, is a great tool to combine with Layering; Resonance is known with certainty even to intermingle with the Layering so that the two techniques are synonomous, on and off, from second to second.

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Onward, then, when the mind conceives of a string of thoughts, on simple and clear analysis it becomes obvious that the mind can often deliberately incorporate all manner of minutia - throughout all of the characterizations, effects, and purposes of a string, and throughout all of its parts. That is, these mentioned simplifiers, additives, beginnings, and asides - among other change- or flow- types - are chosen all after a short moment of feeling, or after brief or even more lengthy reflection - and such a list of modification-types can be extended until it is very long. And then there is the generalized purpose of a given alteration or set thereof - the list of which can also be extended. Were the reader herein to make such lists based on a longer variety of sample modification, and carry them from one aspect or string to another, the reader would find that the possibilities are nearly endless. Hence the definitions that characterize this phenomenon of, “Layering,” are few out of many arts of thought.

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Moving on, this “Layering,” at least as described herein, has centrally resided in the conscious mind, which is largely the center of Yang. But what if this phenomenon of layering in the conscious mind is joined with the awareness of the subconscious - the mind which in its parts could be visually plotted both below and inside the conscious layer? What about the psyche, the soul, the physical, the dream, and other distinguishable aspects of the human mind? How can these minds be separated, then, from anything to do with the activities of the conscious mind? How is it possible for Layering – including a balance of Yin content, along with the described Yang – for it to be related with each of these distinct aspects? How is it possible to define these without including the differences these mind-parts have from person to person? What are the overall tendencies and patterns of a given Layering practitioner? Surely there is much profundity and insight to be had here! Hence, How far, or how deep, does the rabbit-hole of the actively layering human mind really go?