Surrender to the Life Current

The intimacy and thrill of sensory-motor coupling with the world.

OODA: a disposable scaffolding

The OODA (observe-orient-decide-act) loop is a basic cybernetic model for being-in-the-world. It can serve as a useful reference model before being set aside for a more existential model.

OODA was developed by John Boyd of the US Air Force as a mindset for fighter pilots, a pattern for those in high-stakes situations with rapidly changing circumstances: observe what is happening (look out the windows, look at the control meters, register these sensations); orient with respect to this information (where is the enemy plane? How many missiles do I have?); decide on a responsive action plan (dive, pull up and fire missiles); act (start the dive). As circumstances will change rapidly, a multi-step decision plan may get replaced many times without completion as circumstances reveal it to longer be appropriate. Tempo matters: with every passing second, observations become less reflective of the changing circumstances, and so action plans become less fitting.

Now, to convert this to an existential loop.

From OODA to Being-In-The-World

A ladder from OODA loop to enactive loop in five moves:

1. Add what happens, as a result of actions, outside of agential control, explicitly as part of the loop: Observe-Orient-Decide-Act-Happen

2. Explicitly bring forth the aspect of being a loop by repeating the first element, clarifying the cyclical nature: Observe-Orient-Decide-Act-Happen-Observe

3. Collapse Orient and Decide into a unified Responsiveness, and further simplify that to the foundation of existential responsiveness, care: Observe-Care-Act-Happen-Observe

4. Replace Observe with the fundamental human substrate of observation: Presence to Sensation in the Umwelt, simplified here as presence: Presence-Care-Act-Happen-Presence

5. Clarify that in an enactive framework, act does not have the locus of control in a sovereign agent, but is an interaction with the external environment: Presence-Care-Interaction-Happen-Presence

Some elaboration on each element of the loop:

Presence: we have a range of biological capabilities of sensing both outside-the-body (e.g., sensitivity to certain electromagnetic wavelengths, experienced as the field of color) and inside-the-body (e.g. sensitivity to carbon dioxide concentration in our bloodstream, experienced as “stuffiness”). This potential range of sensation is our Umwelt. To be present to our umwelt here means to experience the umwelt without orientation. The three basic forms of orientation are experiential magnification of sensation, diminishment of sensation, and non-registering of sensation.

Care: The most basic orientation in any situation is the felt field of care. Care, embraced as mere sensation, is founded in the magnification, diminishment, and non-registering of sensation. Care changes moment by moment. Notice, the exact same activities that are hinderances to presence are the constituents of care. In the context of presence, held-over patterns of care interfere with the possibilities of fresh patterns of care arising in the changing context.

Interaction: Interaction here refers to interaction directionality. Action is sometimes distinguished from intention, or action directionality: there is how you want things to go and how they actually go. Intention is often used to refer to explicit action directionality when it is made legible; however, in this context directionality is not meant to imply explicit and legible. A man goes up to a woman to ask her out on a date; as he walks up, he trips, and has an awkward conversation: his actual interactions at no point match his interaction directionality. We experience a field of affordances (interaction potentials). We have an impulse that leads to embodied motor action (including speech as a motor action, or, in the case of locked-in-syndrome, eye twitches), which is dependent on our motor capabilities and skill, and may or may not arrive as concrete action in the world in a way that closely matches the interaction directionality.

Happen: it cannot be predicted what happens when interaction resolves as concrete action in the world. For example, with an interaction directionality to push open a door, if the door is only opened by pulling then we will not actually open the door. What actually happens is never fully determinable; further, how we actually act is never fully determinable, as seen in tripping, slips of the tongue, and failures to successfully show-off.

Cultivating surrender to the life current

Presence-Care-Interaction-Happen-Presence: this is the current of life, a single integrated event displayed here as a loop. Its flow is magnified by full presence, liberated care, and broad possibilities of interaction. Fullness of presence and liberation of care are realized deconstructively by releasing limiting patterns, while the breadth of possibilities of interaction is realized constructively.

Presence to sensation can be cultivated by resting in sensation and letting go of adding meaning.

Liberated care is cultivated by becoming sensitive to the endless arising, dissolving and modification in caring that are always occurring. We do not care, it can be discovered; rather, caring arises, dissolves, and self-transforms and we are part of that. The feeling heart is not within us; we are in the feeling heart.

Interaction potentials are cultivated via engagement with the innumerable methods of skillful means, gaining practical power to see, use and dynamically create more and more affordances.

Surrender to the experience of what happens is cultivated by cutting through non-acceptance of what is happening. This surrender is necessary to ride the life current. What actually happens is a given to us, and existential resistance contributes only friction. This surrender to the experience of what happens does not mean that we may not fight against what is happening at a practical (rather than existential) level.

Present to sensation, resting in the feeling heart, with a broad array of interaction potentials, and cutting through non-acceptance of what is happening, we can enjoy the thrill of surrender to the life current.