(From: Chaos to Order—School Talk #50)
In this workshop Dr. Bob says:
A real teaching creates order from disorder by awakening a conscious and objective awareness. Now those are adjectives….
Conscious means you know what your doing and you’re doing it at the time.
It is objective, which means you see everything without relating it to “self” and without judging it as “good or bad” or “right or wrong” according to your taste — you know all these opposite adjectives like right, wrong, good, bad, pretty and ugly are all subjective and are judgments. These opposites are all based on the subjective feeling within me like “How does this affect me.” It’s about “the feeling it gives me”; but it really has nothing to do with the person, thing or event that is going on.
It is more worthwhile to use
descriptive adjectives.
That can be an interesting challenge. So all adjectives that are non-descriptive, to me, are really non-adjectives. That is to say that non-descriptive are not objective–they can’t be objective because they only relate to how I feel about the thing……….
[From Marsha: So I asked myself what would be some objective adjectives and/or descriptive adjectives? Pretty challenging, I must admit……
“good”
Subjective relating to my taste of “good”
I ate too much of the chocolate cake she made because it was delicious; and now I feel fat.
Descriptive – She made a chocolate cake with chocolate icing.
“bad”
Subjective: “bad” You were a bad boy for pushing your sister down.
Descriptive – There are a couple ways to get by your sister. Ask her to move or go around her.
“bad”
Subjective: What a crappy day – rain and wind. I’m so depressed!
Descriptive: Today we have rain. The temperature is 76; and it is cloudy and rainy.
“ugly”
Subjective: I felt embarrassed when I found out that I was about to go out of the house with a dirty blouse because people might laugh at me or peg me as “white trash.”
Descriptive: – He said I had some kind of food staining my blouse and proceeded to get a wet cloth to wipe out the stain. I thanked him since I can’t see.
“pretty”
Subjective: I have a really pretty dress I’ll loan you for the prom.
Descriptive: I have a long red gown with a white bodice that will compliment the corsage you are receiving for the prom. Come, I’ll show you to see if you would like to borrow it.
Subjective: If you had done the “right” thing and not gone off and spent your paycheck on frivolous stuff just on an impulse, you wouldn’t be in this financial crisis.
“right”
Descriptive: I hear you saying that you’ve run out of cash. What’s going on? How did that happen? What might you do differently in the future.
“wrong”
Subjective: He should have known better because I’ve told him time and time again not to put white and black clothes together in the washer; but he still does it. Is he stupid or what?
Descriptive – He put the white clothes and dark clothes together into the washer; but thankfully, they came out with their original colors.
Well this is an attempt. I think it’s a work in progress. I did find that when I became emotional today that I was able to work with descriptive adjectives and not holler.
I do see that in most of the subjective ones that I was wanting to give an opinion of my personal taste or what I have accepted as right or wrong.
Dr. Bob says there is no “right or wrong”, “good or bad”. He talks about thinking in opposites whereas it is more accurate to talk in degrees – it’s not hot — instead, the temperature is 90 degrees. It’s not cold, the temperature is 24 degrees.
From the Dictionary consciousness
NOUN
the state of being awake and aware of one’s surroundings.
the awareness or perception of something by a person.
the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world.