20 Unio

Where in solve the Framework is composed mostly of my own analyses (grounded as they are in thinkers like Hegel and Nietszche), Unio focuses almost entirely on distilling the contents of other self-help programs.

The reason for this is straightforward— the Framework BlogBook is constructed to help you replicate the process of self-discovery and reintegration which allowed me to heal my pathology and alter my disposition. In this process, I found no architecture of solve  sufficient to my purposes, and was therefore forced to create my own. When it came to unio, however, the combination of a few ready-made techniques described by other self-help books was enough for me to achieve reintegration.

As such, the unio section of this BlogBook is more compact than the solve section. The beginning portions consist of three chapters distilling out the essentials of the books which inspired my unio method:

• Gendlin’s Focusing, which summarizes the technique described in Eugene Gendlin’s book Focusing, a means by which contact can be made and communication can be established with your repressed contents.

• Elliot’s Existential Kink, which summarizes Carolyn Elliot’s book Existential Kink, which lays out a technique of  self-talk by which you can reintegrate your repressed mode after making contact with it

• Sasha Chapin’s  Deep Okayness Blog Post, which summarizes the blog post How I Attained Persistent Self-Love, or, I Demand Deep Okayness For Everyone. This was the first clear evidence I had ever seen which indicated that a change of disposition was possible, and served as the guide and model by which I conducted my own unio.

Of course, unio is a rather involved process, and it is unlikely my summaries will be a sufficient means for you to be able to conduct it. Instead my summaries will attempt to serve as a kind of cheat-sheet study guide which lets you know what to look for as you read these (relatively short) books for yourself. I’ll describe the precise means by which I enacted the techniques contained in each work upon myself, as well as the points at which my own understanding of human nature diverges from that of their authors.

The chapter after these, The Moment of Integration will contain a narrative description of the events of April 22nd, 2022, the day on which I altered my own personality using the techniques contained in these sources.

The concluding chapters will be dedicated to various marginalia as it arises; so far, planned chapters include Drugs and the Process of Becoming Whole, an overview of the effect various narcotics have on the processes of solve and unio; and A Personal Narrative of the Framework, a chronological history of my own life and of the Framework’s development.

When to Move On From Solve

Before we get into the meat of unio, however, I’d like to address the difficult question of how to know when you are ready to move on from unio to solve.

This BlogBook is constructed such that you are intended to read the whole thing before even attempting concerted solve, much less unio. As such, whether you feel you are ready for unio  or not, you should continue reading all the way through; you might find that pieces of the unio section clarify and help you better contextualize earlier materials in solve.

That being said, the processes of solve and unio are separate, self contained, and finite. This has been established elsewhere in the book, but it’s worth reiterating. The processes described here are not lifelong pursuits, and are not purposeless exercises in ambient self-knowledge. At a certain point, they complete.

With regard to solve, the signs of this completion are straightforward enough; you’ll simply stop turning up new, notable realizations regarding your pathology. Your lower mind, unable to keep up its program of deception, will stop providing you with rationalizations for your irrational actions. You will find that the thrusts of solve you direct at your subconscious mind receive no repartee, and you will be faced with a direct, willful intransigence which demands that you resort to external means in order to overcome your internal resistance— drugs, schedules, elaborate bargaining schema in the mold  of “If I answer these emails now, I will allow myself to buy a cookie in the afternoon; otherwise I’ll just have coffee.” When you have found that your attempts to overcome your pathological constraints have assumed this external character, that you are hauling on the leash of your lower mind where it lies limply prostrated on the sidewalk, then you will know that you are ready to begin opening lines of self-communication.

However, a complication to this diagnostic criteria presents itself; it is entirely possible— perhaps probable— that the process of completing solve occurs, like the process of completing unio, within the boundaries of a single discrete epiphany on a single discrete day. I know for a fact that my own process of solve achieved completion and came to a halt on a single day; but I am unable to say whether this process should generalize, because this completion coincided with and was driven by a 16 hour long LSD fueled psychotic episode, during which  I destroyed many of my possessions and attempted several times to unplug the universe like a lamp.

I am quite certain that such an episode is not a necessary part of the solve process; I have met several other people who have clearly achieved complete solve, and when directly questioned on the matter none of them have described any sort of mania gripping them. As we will discuss in Drugs and the Process of  Becoming Whole, LSD is a potent force multiplier in the conduct of solve, but it is by no means a necessary one; I completed the unio process without MDMA, and the converse completion of solve without drugs has been attested to among the people I mentioned earlier. However, because my own peak of solve was reached over the course of this profound acid trip, I am unable to say for certain whether the experience of peak solve is on its own a noteworthy and visible one in the way that the sober mind cannot fail to understand that it has achieved something noteworthy in completing unio.

Pending more data, therefore, my suggestions of how to know when you have completed solve will for now be grounded in the state of futility which I outlined earlier. You will come  to understand that the questions you ask of yourself will return again and again the same answers, and that this self-knowledge is experienced not as ultimate self-control, but as a debilitating rupture of your executive functions from your subconscious impulses. It is this state of ultimate dysfunction which should prompt you to the unio process.