Phase Nine™: From Concept to Fulfillment

On a rare occasion, you may have had a reflective moment and feeling joy in that moment, eased back in your chair, and thought, Life is good!

Maybe you were on vacation, relaxing by a pool or the ocean. - (funny how water really brings in the relaxation factor) ...

Maybe it was a day when payday came at the exact moment when you wanted to do something special and there were a few bucks spending money.

Maybe you were shopping for something special to wear to a wedding - maybe your wedding - and you found the perfect thing at the perfect price.

Few of us feel that life is good every day, but something good could be in the works, just not ready to be seen yet.

What it takes to have it good is complicated, and good doesn't always have a tangible form. It could be as simple as moving a bit forward, away from a status quo.

I had more life is good moments when I didn’t have a lot of money, probably because I also had fewer responsibilities without money.

There was a time when I became convinced that there was no good in life - hadn’t seen or felt it for many years. Nature made a believer out of me.

The Physics of Good: Experience, Time, and Movement

It turns out, non-physical experiences in my experience do take on a physical form - eventually.

The trick is to connect the dots from those non-physical beginnings to their end result - trace life from roots to fruit.

Good is simply what makes us ... strong; better; move forward; free; abundant; solid; effective; overflowing; loving.

The 12 Phases™ is the proposition that good moves through time and can be observed, followed, and anticipated.

Let’s look at four ways to connect intrinsic to extrinsic

- Jump to Phase Nine

- Nature's pace

- Gestation and birth

- Fluid Tai chi movements

1. Jump forward to Phase Nine of the 12 Phases™.

There is a sequence in the twelve phases, a kind of program where each phase has a specific function in the system.

The Phase Nine principle of operation is Manifestation - the physical appearance of what has been in the works, unseen, until now.

The kind of manifestation that happens in the 12 Phases™ has specific traits:

The event is a product of your personal growth, is a first-time experience for you, and there are witnesses with you at the time of its appearance.

For this reason, I use the phrase Visible Unity as a keyword for the experience.

Each of the 12 Phases™ has its own pair of keywords to give you an impression of the Phase’s meaning without going into a lot of detail.

So, in Phase Nine, the operating principle is Manifestation, and the experience is Visible Unity. An example of a phase nine experience is the birth of a baby. More about that in a bit…

As a sequence, each phase works toward the next. For example, Phase Eight is a Transition before Manifestation in Phase Nine.

With each movement through the phases, your organism is attracted to elements that increase what’s naturally good for you.

You can only observe and feel what is truly good in life, and you know it, intuitively, when you experience it. Being speechless with wonder is a good sign you’re experiencing a good.

The twelve phases is a natural phenomenon that guards your natural autonomy while it builds your personal strengths.

There is evidence in the physical world, but to recognize it, there’s a connection to the naturally occurring system of growth.

2. Nature’s pace of growth, its visible and invisible aspects.

We observe so much of Nature that doesn't change: Sunrises and sunsets; the changing seasons; weeds, flowers, and trees; animals, birds, and fish in water.

When things are constant in our environment, they become background. You can choose to look closer, but your life can easily proceed without checking on what is constant.

Consider the visible and invisible features of a tree, for example. My logo is a tree with roots, so I'm quite aware that art rarely shows roots when a tree is depicted.

In the city, our awareness of the food we buy and eat is far removed from the processes of the farming, harvesting, ranching, butchering and packaging that brings food into the grocery store.

You can get to a grocery store in minutes, and whip up a dinner in less than an hour. If you were a farmer, the faster pace of city life would be obvious to you.

The law of the farm, as Stephen R. Covey calls it, is the natural system that cannot be shortened. A farmer has no harvest if seed is not planted months earlier. The same is true with us. Principles in Nature do not allow shortcuts to building integrity of character, maintaining a healthy body, or enjoying long-lasting relationships.

In twenty-first century recessions, we are still learning what it takes to replace a company paycheck with our own wits and hard work. This is still the long-term undertaking it always has been.

3. Gestation and Birth

Our own cycle of reproduction is a process largely unseen. Only by relatively recent technological developments is it possible to see the baby’s form beforehand and know the baby's gender.

In the sense of background, billions of births have occurred on Earth, and you yourself have seen or heard of quite a few. A new pregnancy is usually celebrated, long before the baby is born, but gestation is a long, natural, and familiar process.

Pregnancy is not apparent in the mother's body until a few months of development. We can gauge the progress from bump to the large swelling that indicates the size of a fully developed baby.

So despite observing the advancing indications of the approaching birth, we cannot lay eyes on the baby until he or she rests in our arms.

Here's my point about Phase Nine:

The arrival of the baby carries observable facts about the child that could not be known beforehand, and these facts are revealed simultaneously to the parent and to those who witness the birth.

Among the many situations you experience in the world, few carry the weight of historical relevance. Life itself becomes background unless it has significance in your life - and draws the attention of others.

A manifestation is the actual embodiment of the process that came before the fact. In the case of the 12 Phases™, there are eight phases that precede manifestation.

This is the spiritual nature of everyday life: the force of life is invisible and it has an effect on its owner, often so subtle that even in the face of tangible evidence, we forget the connection to its unremarkable beginning.

Here's a different kind of physical example of Phase Nine:

4. Tai chi, as a lesson in relaxation, harmony of opposites, fluid movement, and managing energy inside and out.

I do a tai chi exercise every day. My experience with this routine took an unexpected turn a few days ago ...

It often happens that I get great insights and ideas during the 35-minute session. On this particular day, I wanted to record my thoughts while the audio played.

Because I exercise near my computer, I was able to turn on the recorder with no interruption to the exercise.

What happened was a happy accident: an overlapping of the instructor's coaching and my remarks about what inspired me.

My remarks had to do with transitions between phases, but what I said turned out to be less interesting than the way the flow of the Phases meshed beautifully with the fluid movements of the exercise routine.

It surprised me that the tai chi movements - as I felt them quiet me and release pent-up energy - also helped me visualize the Phases as a parallel sensation through my body.

Imagine your foot is connected to a water hydrant. The water courses up the body, flowing up the leg, up the back, and spraying out the arms, the instructor intones.

The principles of tai chi - complete relaxation, the harmony of opposites, and managing energy (what I see as positive and negative stress) - come together in the constant fluid tai chi movements.

In the same way, the 12 Phases™ move fluidly through your organism as a growth process. A "seed" of good is introduced when your attention is fixated on circumstances. The seed takes root and good grows; your organism responds with the movement of each phase.

You can always find evidence of the process in your gut feelings. Intuition is the power of natural knowledge that isn't consciously reasoned.

And just as gestation, and roots growing from a seed underground, are not visible, there comes a time when personal growth becomes visibly evident.

The lineage of a new thing birthed in your life at Phase Nine can be traced back in your memories, plotted on the twelve phases. You grow into change that becomes permanent, a "good" rooted in your maturity and carries attributes of authority.

Before and after …

In your life history there are clues of unconscious responses. The moment reason fails you, intuition fills in to carry you through the unprecedented circumstance. The Phases acquire benefits while you stumble through unfamiliar situations. A seed of good is planted, and its steady growth moves through you.

Your autonomy is built through the workout inherent in personal growth, and fears are transformed into strength. Your life turns in the direction of the growing good, one that fit perfectly with your nature and disposition.

Comprehension occurs after manifestation as your organism blends the new with all that you know about life, and all past experiences that form your history. Good judgment is the result.

In the finish of the 12 Phases™, some fragment of Perfect Good - something unattainable in the physical world - is permanently installed in your life, like a brick in a new building that takes 100 years to complete.

Next ...

I will continue to elaborate on different phases in the 12 Phases™ system. For now, practice locating your internal experience when you recognize a situation marked by personal growth.

Also in future blogs...

The 12 Phases™ perspective on the origin of life. Key research has appeared in Assembly Theory by Lee Cronin, Sara Imari Walker, and their research teams in Glasgow, Scotland and Tempe, Arizona.

Tell your science-minded and SETI friends!

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Referenced in this blog:

The 12 Phases™ system

Stephen R. Covey books, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and First Things First

"Tai Chi for Health," Terence Dunn