The shepherd , the sheep and the dog. Internal leadership

I have always felt that the society I grew up in was extremely lacking in providing some sort of construct or structure on how to “see” emotions.   And while growing up it also became quite obvious that most members of the human race don’t quite know how to handle them either.

But it was only much later in my life I realized that this is exactly how it needs to be because of the fact that any generalization about emotions is inherently false.

They are so complex and so unique that none of us individually has anything truly valuable to say about how someone else’s emotions are to be identified , handled, structured or interpreted.

In my mind it is everyone’s individual responsibility to learn to see them for themselves. Guidance and external structure about this can only lead you astray into the direction of trying to copy another individual but that can only lead to disaster in every direction. That is again a false mapping exercise that will again lead to the lands of religious dogma where there is only destruction.

And this is just a description of the visualization concept that I use to understand mine , from my perspective. I have little faith that they can apply to anyone else but they are such an important aspect of everything that it’s impossible to write this volume of text without describing this layer within myself.  Or at least how I see that layer, the interactions between emotions and the interactions of the emotional layer in all directions.

So lets get this show on the road.

My “Person”  , my “identity”, my “ID” , my “soul”...   I have no name for it anymore.

This “entity” that is writing this volume of text is a vast unfathomable collection of infinite layers with infinite components and one of those layers are my emotions.

That unique variation of it within my unique representation of an entity identifies his emotional layer as a herd of sheep.  Every sheep is me in its entirety and I am the shepherd and I am the dog.

This “reality” is the landscape of valley’s and mountains that the shepherd is guiding this herd through. Every sheep is an unfathomably complex collection of infinite layers with infinite components and so are the shepherd and so is the dog. The landscape is also made up of infinitely complex entities that we callously summarize in “rivers” , “mountains” , “trees” , “insects” and so on... and most even think that “people” are simple too.

I am the process of the herd (including the shepherd and the dog) travelling along the landscape but my attention is dramatically limited. My attention is painfully inadequate to control every footstep of everyone in the herd.  I cannot control every step that every sheep takes since then it would take me ages to traverse one meter and the herd would die long before we can reach the river that can save us from dehydration and a quick demise.

The process of the herd traversing the landscape is life and the herd is alive. This forces us into dark necessities of constantly seeking enough sustenance in the form of grazing , drinking from streams , cycles of movement and rest. Times of relaxation and play to offset the times that we need to cross through a life threatening blizzard or run away from forest fires. Sometimes the land shakes with earthquakes that can topple mountains on us or that mountain can throw streams of instant death in the form of magma at us.

So the herd continues on it’s journey and the shepherd does it’s best to keep the herd alive and healthy as best it can in this landscape that continuously changes as it rolls under their collective hooves, paws and feet.

It is when the sun shines on a valley of beautiful and luscious green grass that the shepherd lets the herd spread out. Each sheep gains individual freedom to sleep, graze,  frolic and play.  As a general strategy the shepherd tries to spend as much time as possible in that kind of weather and on fields of luscious grass but if he stays there too long the grass will be eaten down to the roots and this place will take too long to recover from the overindulgence of the herd. So even the good places force the herd to move on, but they cannot stay in that loose and free-range state when travelling.

And so the shepherd sometimes needs to bring “in” the herd into a tightly knit group where every individual sheep can see no further then the rear end of the other sheep, they cannot hear anything else then the basic bleating of the other sheep and they can smell nothing else then the other sheep. Because of this they have nothing else to go on then the general direction of the group and that group is being guided and herded by the shepherd and the dog.

It is only when the herd is in good pastures that the individual sheep can fully use their perceptions individually, but when the herd needs to travel that is no longer the case.

When the herd is moving, they need to move as a single entity, closely together.  

And it is so that in the times that the herd cannot frolic and feast on the luscious green grass in the sunlight that the herd’s survival and future times of frolicking depends solely on the attention, skill , focus and dedication of the shepherd and his dog.

The shepherd is the guide that knows where to go and plans for the future. It is the shepherd who chooses when to leave green grass, and exchange it for the potentially inhospitable mountain passes or barren paths.

The dog is the extremely devoted soldier that protects the sheep on their own level but also uses its deadly potential to keep the sheep in formation and moving in the right direction under the constant direction of the shepherds instructions.

The dog does not need to plan or think about the why. The dog only needs to execute the how in a delicate balance of protection and pressure. The dog will never hurt any of the sheep, yet it uses it’s potential to do so to force the sheep into any direction they need to go.

But all the sheep are complex constructs themselves.  They can’t be programmed like automatons that always do what’s best for the herd.  They constantly interact with each other while they each depend on the survival of the herd.  And all these sheep are all very different from each other and so sometimes conflict erupts between them. 

Accidents happen , like an acorn falling on the head of one sheep that assumed that he just got kicked in the head by the sheep next to it and it bites back in warning to make it stop.  The other sheep has no clue what’s going on except the fact that it’s neighbor suddenly tries to bite it ...   even at times of perfect harmony , unity can be broken and lost by just a simple random act like one acorn falling from a tree.

And so it is unavoidable that sometimes a sheep goes astray, even while travelling in this tightly knit formation.  The formation makes it easier to protect the herd and guide them through safety, but it is not a foolproof system because of the individuality of each sheep.

A sheep going astray doesn’t even always happen because of external causes or dramatic events. Even at times of play or abundance it could happen that a sheep simply looses its way since it was too focused on trying to eat all that luscious grass ...  it’s head down feasting on grass and just eating more while the rest of the herd was moving away in the other direction.

It is when sheep stray from the herd that the herd faces its most dangerous times.

This is so because the very limited focused attention of the “control” has to divide it’s time now. Do “I” leave the herd in search of that one stray sheep and thus leaving the herd without protection or guidance?

Do the shepherd and the dog search for the stray sheep together only to come back and find that the herd lost ten more sheep in the time it took to find the one that was lost?

Does the shepherd leave the dog with the herd , only to find the stray sheep threatened by a wolf that the shepherd cannot defend against?  

Would the shepherd attack the wolf on his own in that case, with great risk to himself and thus risking the welfare of the entire herd even more?

Does the dog go look for the sheep by itself only to discover that rescuing it from the crevice it has fallen in requires planning and intelligence that the dog simply cannot execute? Its canine devotion would force it to stay with that stray while the rest of the herd could require herding or protection. Simply making the right choice would require the shepherd to be there but he stayed with the herd in this case.

And so by sometimes loosing some sheep here and there, sometimes by having to spend weeks to gather the entire herd after foolishly searching too long for one stray , by making the wrong divisions of attention for the wrong potential dangers around the landscape...  the shepherd learns. The heard learns. The process learns. There is internal leadership.

The sheep learn to spend more attention on staying together and trusting the dog and the shepherd. The shepherd learns to pay more attention to the land so that if one strays from the herd , he has a better chance of making the right choices in how to retrieve it, or to not even bother.

The dog learns to focus on the welfare of the sheep and trust the shepherd to observe the larger landscape and make the right decisions...  or the wrong ones.

The shepherd learn "through" his herd and his dog.

The shepherd is leadership ,guidance and thought.

The dog is duty , dedication , diligence, focus and skill.

The sheep are our vast collection of emotions, but they are also icons on a car dashboard....

https://www.chilltervention.it/post/the-driver-the-dashboard-and-the-car