„Your Inner Computer“ Series No. 3

Endless Loops

© Heidrun Beer 2004

The idea that something like „system crashes“ could exist in our inner computer, the mind, is still a surprise. The concept that we could train emotionally more stable reaction patterns instead of helplessly collapsing in exceptional situations, requires not only mental accustomatization but also consequent regular work for several years.

The disconnection from behavior patterns alone, like we see them continuously in the movies of mainstream media (cinema, TV) and which therefore belong to our daily „programming“, requires an above-average amount of determination and courage. We stem ourselves against the stream - and have to lern to withstand enormous energies, as if we were building a concrete bridge pillar into a river.

But at least the patterns from which we want to disconnnect, are highly visible and often additionally heightened and sharpened by a screenplay author or movie director, so that they are overproportionally impressive. Compared with that, there is another category of maybe even more fatal behavior patterns which are nearly invisible, can be detected only with very sharp senses, and yet can crash an operating system more efficiently than most other things.

The System Freezes

Anybody who has not seen it yet can consider himself lucky: We sit in front of the computer, browse the internet or edit a document - and suddenly, without an apparent reason, the mouse cursor freezes, the keyboard doesn’t react anymore, and the computer has to get rebooted before it reacts normally again.

For the unaided eye, the reason for such an event is not visible in most cases. It happens “out of the blue” - although after it happened for a few times, we begin to sense what the reason could be. “Each time I disconnect from the internet, the computer freezes and I have to restart!” is a very typical complaint.

Of course on the operating system level there exists a specific reason for the freeze: the system is hung up in a loop which has no exit - a loop which never ends. The technical term for it is “endless loop”. In other words, the system runs in a circle! Nothing else than hitting the reset button will terminate this condition, the computer starts afresh, and the system loads properly again.

Loops in the computer

A programmer thinks in loops most of the time, or in other words, in working steps which keep being repeated and are intertwined with each other. A loop is characterized by the fact that certain things are being done over and over again, until an exit condition is reached. “Ask what the user wants and do it, until the system closes down” is the outer loop in the operating system of a computer. It repeats this command one time after the other, like a robot.

Inside of this outer loop there is a main loop for every program: „Ask for input, until the user terminates you”, with numerous sub-loops for the connected devices and the various program functions.

Endless loops which cause the system to freeze come about either when the exit condition in a loop is not correctly formulated, or if two loops run at the same time, each of whom waits for the other. If for instance the graphics card runs a sub-loop “wait until the mouse cursor is freshly drawn, and then redraw the screen”, while at the same time the mouse runs the sub-loop “wait until the screen has finished drawing, and then redraw the mouse cursor”, each of them waits for the other - and that forever! The visible result is the well known and much hated “freeze” of the operating system, which can be resolved only by restarting the computer.

Loops in the mind

Our thinking consists of loops too, as well as all of nature. The orbiting of Earth around the sun keeps repeating itself as well as the rotation of Earth around its axis. The change of seasons is a loop which will repeat itself until the sun at the end of its existence will devour Earth (a very distinctive exit condition!)

A well known loop in human life is the catholic marriage promise „until death does part you“. The moment where one of the marriage partners dies has been defined as the exit condition for an outer loop, which contains many smaller and smallest loops for the organization of daily life, each with its own very definite exit condition, be it “go to work daily until you retire”, “stir the pudding until it gets solid”, or “help your kids until they are grown up”.

Formulated in a programming language - the lines beginning with subloop stand for the various sub-programs of daily life - this program would look like this:

repeat

subloop_1

subloop_2

[...]

until (partner_1 is dead) or (partner_2 is dead)

„We stay together as long as we love each other“ or „We stay together as long as we have interests in common“ are two a little more intelligent wordings for a similar loop, especially for people who are aware of the fact that they don’t live only once; that their partner or they themselves will maybe steer into a direction one day with is no longer compatible with that of the other one; that a partnership makes sense only if the advantages for both are bigger than the disadvantages; and that people with similar interests and similar speed will always find each other, regardless of their physical age.

Here the loop contains an ongoing check of its own plausibility, similar to the time of mutual testing before the marriage. We could say it goes back to its beginning - as if two people would get married again every day. In this configuration, the question whether they match is not asked only at the beginning of the partnership, but it gets asked over and over again. compatible stands in the program text for a function which checks the harmony of the two partners; it is defined outside of the loop and can be very simple, very complex or anything in between.

if compatible(partner_1, partner_2) = true then repeat

           // Compatibility gets tested and leads to marriage

if compatible(partner_1, partner_2) = false then goto exit

        // Ongoing tests of compatibility during marriage ensure that the partnership

        // remains productive

subloop_1

subloop_2

[...] // any number of other loops which constitute daily life

until (partner_1 is dead) or (partner_2 is dead)

 

exit: [...]    // End of marriage! Now both partner have the opportunity

                                      // to create a life which makes more sense

But this is only the program section „partnership“! Then there is “profession”, “health”, “children”, “spiritual progress” and all sorts of other program sections, whose loops have to get artfully intertwined in order to make a human life function, like the various devices of a computer need to work together and the various programs which run at the same time, need to share the devices without any conflicts - an enormous task for the mind.

Every such loop must therefore typically contain commands like „keep an eye on the other running loops“ or „improve your pattern if something doesn’t run well!“ And with that there are sometimes difficulties which can be so serious that the whole inner operating system “freezes” and life comes to a standstill.

Sometimes we still feel that we sit in a trap and run in circles - sometimes not even that, especially when the loop does not allow us anymore to view and analyze our own situation. A failed marriage is a good example for such an endless loop, especially where a financially dependent woman cannot break free from her breadwinner who has proven to be “toxic”, but there are many other examples.

If there were only such a simple solution for these fatal „crashes“ like pressing the reset button on the computer!

Disease

Disease can be such an endless loop. Some hospital stays make an endless loop impossible: “Stay in the labor ward until the baby is born” has a built-in exit condition. As soon as the baby is breathing, the waiting loop has an end. “Stay in hospital for a week” can never be an endless loop, because the clock and the calendar terminate the loop. Also such loops don’t primarily happen in the mind, they happen outside in the physical environment. Except for being forgotten in a prison, it is nearly impossible to get hung up in such a loop.

But what if we are unlucky enough to have a disease which prevents its own healing? This is not as utopic at it first seems. Many people for instance suffer from an unknown poisoning by mercury from their tooth fillings. This has serious consequences on mental alertness, memory and initiative. Even if they manage to delegate their alertness to healthy family members or friends and these tell them about the problem which they maybe didn’t notice because of their reduced understanding, nobody can guarantee that somebody reminds them three times a day to take the medicines which remove the mercury from the body and improve their memory enough that they don’t forget to take their medicines anymore.

A fatal circle! The poison itself prevents its own discovery and removal, it prevents the patient from having sufficient alertness to recognize the symptoms and interpret them correctly, from having sufficient initiative to get himself treated, and from having sufficient memory to think about taking the medicines. If not mother, father, partner or friend press the reset button for him, so that his tooth fillings get replaced by harmless ones and the mercury gets removed from his body afterwards, he has nearly no chance to escape this endless loop. He will end as an Alzheimer patient who does not even recognize his own children.

Fitness

Another, not much less dangerous endless loop keeps those poor people entrapped who by missing physical exercise have developed a condition where every attempt to train to body more fit, ends in pain or joint damage, or the heightened blood circulation moves so many poisons from the tissues and brings them into the blood stream, that they become sick or unable to work and give up the training because they feel worse instead of better with it.

This too is a loop which happens more on the physical plane than in the software of the personality, the „operating system“ of the mind. Hitting the imaginary reset key is the only way out here too, the only chance to avoid a miserable life with overweight, diabetes and heart problems. Some well meaning family member or a friend must undertake the difficult task to break the endless loop and offer an exit which will not only effect the necessary changes but is also walkable.

Poverty

The most terrible endless loop, which also happens in the physical environment at least partially, is poverty. We don’t want to talk about the poverty of whole countries here, which probably cannot be changed without a mutual effort of the rich countries of Earth, but the poverty of individual persons within a wealthy society.

The maybe most brutal form of poverty is the one which hits young people who are talented, but because of their stemming from a low-level social group, or maybe because a disastrous event, are in a situation where they simply cannot afford the education which could ensure them a job with a decent income.

At least if they live in a country where they have to pay for their education, and where low-income students are not supported by scholarships, they don’t really have a chance to ever escape that circle. And even if there is a social net which would allow poor, but gifted children to get an education, it is still very probable that they will have to take on an unqualified job instead in order to keep their family alive.

Another example for an endless loop which prevents its own termination, and where somebody would have to hit the reset button in order to restore the operating system. Banks don’t help in such a case. But a godfather or personal sponsor, even an adoption into a wealthier family could allow such people to get an education. They would certainly pay their debts back with interest as soon as they can afford it. To forgo such people by excluding them from the ladder of education and career, is a waste of valuable “human material” which every society should think about. Maybe they would have a special ability to find solutions for difficult social problems, just because they come from social groups who don’t have an easy life?

Endless loops in the case

One endless loop which happens entirely in the mind we know all too well: it is the memory of a trauma which protects itself by built-in defense mechanisms against the erasure in session. By its special construction it prevents its own dissolution; the client’s attention is being sent into other directions, and if the processor is not prepared to handle that, this special suppressed memory will remain unaccessible and will keep causing case trouble.

Running in a marvellous loop we see the case who has to be right. If not a real life catastrophe shakes him (in this case life, or maybe his own karma, hits the reset button of his inner computer), such a case can certainly be expected to never even come near a processor who causes him to work over his inner “configuration”. After all, the way he is, he is perfect!

Another frequent situation is the apathy endless loop. Here every bit of energy and hope for life improvement has disappeared, and the person reaches for his chance to come to a better mood level with more life energy by processing not even if it is offered to him completely for free. To discover a reset function for that would be a task for a real master.

Out-Int

Less well known is another, especially vicious endless loop. Trained scientologists know the term “out-int”, but how extreme and hopeless the trap can be into which a person falls who goes “out-int”, is very unreal to anybody who has not been there himself. (Out-Int is a case condition where a person has difficulties to handle space or spaces. It has priority before all other case problems and therefore is listed first on all repair lists.)

The building where processing is done seems to be infinitely far away, or even the step through the entrance door causes negative sensations. Session rooms, processors, even the most simple study materials seem to exist behind barriers in space which cannot be overcome, through which it is not possible to reach, even if the client is totally convinced of the workability of the processes, trained experts are ready to go to work, and there are also no financial problems. The invisible walls in space are so massive that help from outside is necessary in order to crush them - “pressing the reset button” by a good friend, partner or family member, which has already been mentioned a few times. Such a deed of love is priceless, and certainly it will be returned one day.

Misrepresentation

An especially delightful loop is being created by those practitioners and centers who misrepresent the idea of spiritual development and by their sometimes nearly unbearable arrogance, their bad example and their code breaks cause students and guests of their centers to get upset and maybe even abandon the whole subject altogether.

It is nearly unnecessary to remark that such behavíor is always contradicting these centers’ own policies, although especially the worst evildoers insist most in being absolutely true to policy. Somewhere in the small print, but often already in the big headlines, the rule which gets broken and whose break causes nightmare-like consequences, can always be found.

At a time where we observe so massive mis-developments in the area of mental and spiritual work, it is especially important that a student or client can evaluate priorities and is able to differentiate with precision. Only this makes ist possible to discern valuable and useable principles and tools in a mass of materials which are not all of equal quality and reliability, especially in the presence of so many heartbreaking case histories which are being told in the media and on the internet.

Yet the ability to differentiate is actually a product of mental work. In a strongly charged case it is not, or at least not very present at the beginning. In perfect circumstances this would not be a problem; we would hold the client in such an ideal environment that he can totally concentrate on his case, makes immediate wins and begins slowly to learn to differentiate precisely. After that we can confront him with the chaos of reality step by step.

But circumstances which are so ideal that the evaluation of all factors - environment, processing team, technology, economic factors - reaches a value of 1,0 (100 percent), don’t exist anywhere in the world. A black-white logic which results in either 1 (“yes”) or 0 (“no”) can therefore not be used for such an evaluation. It would be necessary to use a grey-level logic which evaluates plus and minus points with great alertness and comes to a percentual result. Whenever the plus points outweigh the minus points, it would be possible to work with a team - otherwise not:

if Evaluate(ListOfFactors) > 0,50 then repeat

Have_A_Session

until SumOfCase = 0 or Evaluate(ListOfFactors) < 0,50

We sense the problem: the value SumOfCase influences the result of the function Evaluate. The smaller SumOfCase is, the more precise the function Evaluate can calculate, because case means incorrect identification, the opposite of differentiation, so that we get the less calculation depth, the bigger SumOfCase still is.

It is possible that before the beginning of processing Evaluate calculates with so little precision that factors which are contained in ListOfFactors - like negative press, discouraging eyewitness reports, but also the observation of misrepresentation - compared with the value of the employed technology result in a percentage below 50%.

Some people, prompted by their case, are entirely unable to discern smaller differences than „0“ and „1“. In these cases, at the slightest error, the candidate will never start processing at all; his ability to evaluate data will never improve enough that the sum of all relevant factors results in more than 50% - because the sharp eye, which he could develop by processing, he would already need to possess before the beginning of the processing in order to get started at all!

The candidate would need to have the ability to differentiate already before the beginning of the path which is supposed to lead him toward the ability to differentiate, in order to separate the wheat from the chaff, to ignore the bad news and concentrate on those things which really help him forward.

Good examples

In this case we have an especially interesting loop. It is not an endless loop whose exit condition never occurs, it is a loop whose entry condition never occurs and which for this reason can never start to run. The product of a chain of actions would have to be present already before that chain of actions starts to occur for the first time, which at its end point would produce the first bit of its product - a logical impossibility. You don’t believe it? Demonstrate it with a demo kit!

In the thinking model of a programmer: we would need to have a functioning operating system in reserve if we want to find and debug the errors in a computer’s operating system. We would need to start with a discette - a discette which contains the core of necessary system programs, without any errors.

We would need to create an artificial environment for the client, a mini-paradise, where neither financial problems nor alarming newspaper stories disturb his well-being - and last of all our own misbehavior! -, until he has learned to differentiate sufficiently well to successfully deal with these things and realistically evaluate their weight, which compared with his potential wins by a brilliant technology will found to be rather small.

In other words: We would need to be shining examples and know our principles and codes by heart, so that our mere presence gives the client a feeling of being totally safe, and we as programmers never introduce additional weaknesses into an operating system which we are about to repair.

Do the doable

In any case where we have the perception or awareness of being trapped in an endless loop - of running in circles without any possibility of breaking out -, there is something which can be done even if nobody is there who would press the imaginary reset-button for us.

It is a process so simple that it can be applied even in the heaviest and most desparate situations, where nearly no free energy is present to organize a session environment. A lady who is terrorized by a violent husband and cannot get away because she has no job training can apply it. A child in a discouraging school environment can apply it. Any sick person or person trapped in an overwhelming case charge can apply it.

The process is not run in session but in life; it is called “do the doable”. There is always something which can be done. Even a person on his deathbed can perform the single-line command which results from the question “What can be done?” In his case, a possible answer could be “breathe”. Even after breathing has stopped, there is still something he can do: “perceive” - maybe that will bring about some of his most remarkable experiences ever.

Finding the thing or things that can be done in an apparently hopeless situation immediately restores a spiritual being’s causativeness. It doesn’t necessarily have to be something which leads out of the trap, or breaks the endless loop. The very fact that something exists which can be done is the magic trick. Then, after causativeness has been restored, the question can be extended into “What can be done to break the loop?” And with the answer or answers to this question, an escape from the trap can be built.

Don’t bother to advertise this method as a session process. Selling processing or mental training to desparate people is too complex a thing for them. Just give them the question, or give it to yourself if you need it, and things will start to change.

 „Your Inner Computer“ Series No. 2: Exception Handling  --  „Your Inner Computer“ Series No. 4: Settings

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This page last changed on: 30. Mar 13