The Three Primary Motivators/Degrees of Sensory Stimulation (Energy Impact and/or Influence)
- Pleasure & its Pursuit
- Pain & its Avoidance
- Pure Perception & its Experience
- How they interact
Operational Definitions:
These are the three categories of energy intensity, their impact on your body (biological organism/sensory system) and energetic field (awareness system), and their role in the your “motivation” (belief system) to respond to that energy impact. They can also be categorized as ways to measure varying amounts of accumulated energy.
These categories actually have two purposes, depending on their function and context. Perception, pleasure, and pain are the three intensities, or degrees, of any stimulating signal. Because a record of this intensity level is associated with the S & R unit that is created at the time of that stimulation, these three terms also serve as the three primary motivators behind every human action.
When discussing the intensity level of a stimulus itself, the terms Perception, Pleasure, and Pain are used. When discussing the motivational qualities that they incite, the terms Experience of Pure Perception, Pursuit of Pleasure, or Avoidance of Pain are used in some form.
Humans are driven initially by the intention of a simple, focused Awareness. But once the Belief System starts to form, then the human comes under the direction, or motivation, of that Belief System. Therefore, the stimulus intensity level of the beliefs within that system begin to direct all actions and reactions.
Here is the overall question for this section: “Why do we do what we do?”
The Nature of Pleasure
Pleasure: Any moderate, non-tissue-destructive, level of vibrational stimuli, perceived by the Sensory or Awareness System.
Once any stimulus is perceived, the signal impression of that stimulus may have a physical impact on one of the sensory organs. A moderate level of stimulation can often (but not always) be considered pleasurable. That signal/energy event stimulates the Sensory System more than a mere perception, but not approaching the point at which any sort of human tissue destruction is felt. The organism will seek the repetition of this type of experience, since it is a heightened degree of non-aversive stimulation.
The first human experience of any particular pleasurable stimulation results in the organism’s voluntary (if not totally “understood”) decision to create a belief in which the pleasant stimulus is associated with a pleasurable response (often this response is the body’s attempt to have the stimulation continued or replicated). Thus, a “positive,” pleasurable belief is created. The human organism stores this creation in memory, and continues through life pursuing the repeated replication of this experience.
However, the organism, originally designed simply to process sensory information, now is slightly side-tracked in those efforts by a new motivation, pursuing the replication of its many pleasurable creations. The human machine begins to go on automatic, less in control by the Awareness System now than by the newly forming Belief System. The pursuit of pleasure, then, becomes one of the three primary motivating forces behind all human behavior: the replication of past pleasurable experiences, even at times to the detriment of the organism itself. Past creations are then validated, strengthened by the neural network, and pursued again. Both primary and secondary creations seek this replication, and replication is successful only based on the total condition of the rest of the Belief System, and its constant demands upon the organism.
The Nature of Pain
Pain: Any high, potentially-tissue-destructive, level of vibrational stimuli, perceived by the Sensory or Awareness System.
Pain is merely an amplified version of pleasure in most cases. Constantly receiving vibrational stimuli and increased energy events, the organism is sometimes in the proximity of stimulation that exceeds that with which it is previously familiar. Sometimes this excessive stimulation has the potential for actual tissue destruction of the receiving organism.
For example, a soft musical sound may at first simply be neutrally perceived by the organism, Then, as it grows louder, it is possibly interpreted as pleasurable, as the organism responds in previously established patterns to the music. But as the sound’s amplitude or frequency, or both, increase, they may approach levels that are physically destructive to the eardrums, or some other part of the hearing organs. Thus is produced what the organism may call “pain,” the unpleasantly extreme perception of musical sounds. A soft touch to the arm, also, begins as a pleasant experience, but if the same stimulus begins to touch the arm harder, or sharper, or hotter, then tissue destruction may occur, and the organism voluntarily chooses to move away from the aversive stimulus. In this way is born another one of the three primary motivating forces behind all human behavior: the avoidance of pain. Whether it is tactile, auditory, visual, gustatory, or olfactory, most sensory stimuli come in degrees, and depending on the previously created Belief System’s interpretation of that perceived information, the sensory stimulation will be responded to in an appropriately programmed fashion — either toward the painful stimulation or away from it. The usual human response is to avoid such events. However, there are times when the Belief System actually chooses for the human to further pursue a pain-related event.
External stimulation is not required, either, to produce this response of pulling away. If any secondary belief (a source of internal stimulation) has been previously created in association with an earlier primary experience of pain, it will also lead to an avoidance response in the organism on a more complex level. Our “negative” emotions are only elaborate formations of a collection of pain-associated beliefs. Sensory information that is in any way in vibrational disharmony with either the sensory organs or the beliefs associated with those sensory organs will he interpreted as painful to the organism.
The Nature of Perception
Pure Perception: Any vibrational signal (amplitude plus frequency) received by the Sensory or Awareness System (which includes both the five external senses and the body’s internal neural network), where the reception of this signal does not activate any previously associated belief units (S & R), nor the creation of any new beliefs. Perception is the experience of actual direct awareness of a stimulus, without any associated response.
Perception is the act of being aware of sensory input without triggering any sort of judgment or interpretation (a belief-based reaction). Practiced to extremes, you begin to “awaken” to a new point in which you can see just how much creation of meaning (belief building) has gone on in your earlier years.
For example, to perceive a tree just as a tree is also to not voluntarily associate it with seasons, or hurricanes, or palm leaves, or maple syrup. For an aware person, the tree becomes just a series of shapes and colors. Even the word/label “tree” is itself still a combination of beliefs concerning colors and shapes. What is green? What is brown? Tall or old? These concepts can be broken down even further into basic vibrational frequencies and amplitude perceived by the eyes. This practice helps us begin to break through barriers of limited thinking, false interpretations concerning the nature of the physical universe. Although it might be considered easier just to convey the concept of “tree” to another person, the communication is still limited, because the other person has already created their own different version of “tree.” The only true experience of the thing that we usually call “tree” then, is our direct perception of the vibrational stimuli, unconverted into a thought or a word story.
Awareness plus sensing equals pure perception. This act is the simplest of the three primary motivators behind all human behavior: the organism’s basic intention to receive stimulating information from the external and internal environment, and to process it in an objective, non-judgmental manner, so as to lead to a fuller understanding of the nature of the physical and social universe in which the organism has been placed.
In practicing the act of pure perception (truly objective observation), one may use this activity for the accomplishment of belief completion, in which the S & R unit is broken back down into its two independent components: S equals only S, R equals only R, S does not automatically associate with R. (This activity will be covered further in the section about the Intentional Completion Processes).
How The Three Primary Motivators Relate To Each Other
First, let’s clear up a common misconception about the labeling of our physical experiences: Perception, pleasure, and pain are not converse, or opposite, qualities. They are basically similar qualities located along a continuum called Degrees of Sensory Stimulation. That means that we are all going to experience events in life, but there is no one absolute way to determine if that event is painful or pleasurable to us. So each person individually creates a “continuum,” or scale of measurement, to decide this.
When any vibrational signal (also called an “energy event”) exists in the physical world, it emits the previously-described amplitude and frequency signal. Everything is Energy, remember? And all Energy is measured with these two factors in mind, amplitude (or power) and frequency (or intensity). When an organism’s sensory receptors perceive that signal within their range of perception, they either 1.) easily receive the signal and pass it on to the rest of the Sensory System (the body’s neural network), or 2.) they filter it out (ignore it, like we do with so many thousands of stimuli every day), and the signal’s energetic information is not processed by any receptor. If the signal has been previously experienced, then a record of it has been maintained within the resonant circuits of the brain’s memory system. At the first experience of perception, the signal had one of three impacts on the organism:
Stimulus Signal Initial Intensities/The Perception-Pleasure-Pain Continuum
1.) Pure Perception: it was not a strong signal, and the energetic impression it made on the neural network is processed quickly and then released (no long-term belief is created for future replication). It merely passed into and back out of the appropriate processing center in the brain,
2.) Pleasure: it was a more stimulating signal, and once the signal hit the brain, an appropriate response was associated with that signal. This response was “Seek a replication of that experience!” It in no way damaged any part of the organism, so continued exposure to that stimulus was considered (originally by the Awareness system) okay to replicate,
3.) Pain: it was an extremely stimulating signal, and it possibly actually damaged some part of the organism, or vibrated at a frequency which forced some unnatural response by the organism to interrupt reception of that signal, The organism made a “choice response” (originally determined by the awareness system rather than the belief system) and said “Let’s get away from that one!” The signal did pose a present and future threat to the condition of the organism’s tissue arid functioning, so continued exposure to, or future replication of, that stimulus was to be forever avoided.
Important reminder: **DON’T FORGET THAT IT IS NOT ALWAYS AN ACTUAL VARIATION IN THE ENERGY SIGNAL’S AMP/FREQ THAT DETERMINES OUR MOTIVATED RESPONSE. THAT OCCURS ONLY AT THE FIRST IMPRESSION OF THAT EVENT. AFTER THAT IT BECOMES AN AUTOMATIC BELIEF PATTERN, AND USUALLY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ACTUAL PHYSICAL SENSATION/ENERGY IMPACT TO THE SENSES.
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As stated earlier, Pain and pleasure are not opposite things, but simply varied degrees of the same thing. And, based on the early decisions made by each organism’s Awareness System, every replicated experience then falls into the category of pleasure to be pursued, pain to be avoided, or Pure Perception to be objectively experienced. Thus arose the Three Primary Motivators behind all human activity.
The “degrees of stimulation” fall into these three categories. How human motivation is determined lies in the action that is taken, the energy that is expended, because of those degrees of stimulation. This is another reason why I refer to these three “P’s” as both “degrees of
stimulation” and as “primary motivators.” Stimulation plus the connected energy expended to respond equals a “motivation.”
My college texts in Psychology only mentioned two motivators in life: the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure. But I then started to wonder about the relatively infrequent periods of our lives when we are able to sit back and truly relax within some beautiful natural environment. It might be the pursuit of pleasure that brings us to that environment, but it is a seeking of a return to pure sensory awareness that occurs once we are in that place. At the very first moment of our lives, we were unencumbered by desires to pursue pleasure or avoid pain, because, for a tiny moment, we had not yet experienced those types of stimulation. The active seeking of a Pure Perception experience is primarily based on our desire to recapture that original brief moment of total objective sensory awareness. “Recapturing past moments” is what life has been all about, and this early moment is no exception. Once a person finally re-experiences this moment, through some type of meditation, or possibly a chemically-induced moment of lucidity, they seek to develop ways to learn how to reactivate that experience At Will. They are motivated first to seek the physically pleasurable benefits of this experience, and then they are motivated to shut down the brain chatter that keeps them from experiencing this Awareness more often and more completely.
All pain- and pleasure-connected memories are tied to the Belief System. The experience of Pure Perception does not involve the Belief System, and its subjective, interpretative ways. It is Being Here Now with no other intention than to perceive without translating, to experience without judgment or justification. It is the experience that is sought when anyone wants to begin the Completion process on some unwanted painful belief, because the Stimulus & Response connection can be broken back down into its two separate components when the art of Pure Perception is developed.
Here is an example of how the three primary motivators relate to each other:
Once upon a time, there were three bright kids who were very special. Why? Because they were triplets. And whenever they were together, they loved to chat about the life around them. Their names were Peter, Piper, and Pepper.
This morning, they had just headed out for their daily walk to school. Peter started the morning conversation.
“Yesterday, in class,” he began, “ my teacher asked me why I like to do the things that I like to do. And I wasn’t sure how to answer her at the time. How would you guys deal with that question?”
“Well,” replied Piper, “you have to decide what motivates you each and every day.”
Pepper added, “But that answer is different strokes for different folks.”
“What do you mean by that?” Peter asked.
“Well,” Pepper answered, “ Let’s take a few examples, and see what we each think about different things that could motivate us to do what we do, and to like or dislike what we like or dislike. Wanna play?”
“Sure,” the two other siblings responded. “”Where do we start?”
Peter offered the first item for consideration. “The sun is out today. What do you think about that? I think that it is a very pleasant sensation. It is warm on the skin, and it makes things much easier to see!”
Piper responded, “Well, I think it kind of hurts when the sun gets too warm on your skin. Also it could really mess up your eyes if you look too long at it.”
Pepper also responded, “It is just a faraway collection of energy. It has a certain color, a certain shape, and it is just there. It doesn’t have to to affect us one way or the other.”
Peter then asked, “What about the wind? It is a windy day today. I like the wind because of the way it cools me down and sometimes it seems like a whispering voice that talks to me.”
Piper reacted, “I don’t like the wind. It blows dust in my eyes and it messes up my hair and I have to hold on tighter to my books and papers so they don’t blow all over the place.”
Pepper suggested, “The wind is just a moving mass of air and energy that circles the whole planet. For it to bother you in any way first requires that you choose to be involved in some kind of activity that is affected by the wind. The wind itself is just another neutral thing. Not good or bad. Just a mass of moving air.”
Peter then continued, “What about rainbows? Everybody likes rainbows. They don’t hurt the eyes and they have all the pretty colors in them.”
Piper countered, “But rainbows only appear after you have been through some kind of rain storm. And while you are looking up at the silly rainbows, you’re probably walking through puddles and getting your feet all wet. That is a bummer, because your socks will never dry for the rest of the day!”
Pepper inquired, “Did you guys know that rainbows don’t really exist? They only seem to exist because your eye is looking in a certain direction when there is a certain amount of water vapor in the air. And the sunlight reflecting off of that water vapor into your eyeball makes it look like there is a rainbow. But your eye invented the rainbow. No eyeball, no rainbow.”
Peter then wondered, “What about turtles? They are quiet. They are cute. And they live a long peaceful life.”
Piper complained, “But they do stink a bit. And when I pick one up it usually pees on my hand. And I have to make sure it’s not a snapping turtle or it could cut me.”
Pepper explained, “Turtles are just another collection of flesh and bone that travels the planet like everything else. Once again, it only pleases you or bothers you if your own plans and desires get in the way of the turtle’s plans and desires. Leave them alone, and no muss, no fuss.”
Peter then suggested, “What about a dog? We have a dog. Don’t you think he is all cuddly? And he plays with us too.”
Piper griped, “All a dog is good for is to eat, to sleep, to poop and to pee. And to bother you with his incessant barking. And to chew on your favorite stuff. And to scratch the furniture. And to jump up on you at bedtime.”
Pepper clarified, “Dogs are just another category of a conscious creative life form, responding to the same environment and stimuli that we all face every day. Any judgments that you place on dogs originate from the judgments that you learn from other people about dogs. Dogs are dogs. Cats are cats. Elephants are elephants. We are all just organisms seeking to survive on this planet.”
Peter then tried another item, “What about books, like our school books? I love to read. I love the stories that take my imagination to faraway places. I also like to learn about things around me.”
Piper argued, “But some books are dumb. And some are too hard to read. And some are full of people who are just stuck up with her own big thoughts. And they say mean things about other people. And they can cause trouble with their words. And our school books are too heavy to carry around all day long.”
Pepper noted, “Books are just paper-based products. The actual words in them are just composed of man-made alphabet letters put together in different patterns. The shapes of letters are just shapes, and those shapes differ with other cultures. The book itself has no meaning. Someone chose to write down their limited beliefs based on their limited knowledge of how to put limited words together in a limited sentence. But the book itself has no meaning, and doesn’t have to require any kind of pleasant or unpleasant response. A book is just white paper, black marks, and we then decide how those black marks are going to be shaped, analyzed, and interpreted. And then we also decide how we are going to respond to observing those black marks. Or maybe we just don’t respond at all. Totally our choice.”
Peter then wondered, “What about memories? I love my memories of going to the beach, and having birthday parties, and exploring exciting places, I wish I could do a lot of those things more and more and all the time. They were very pleasant memories. Memories can be very powerful motivators.”
Piper returned, “I just remember getting spanked. I remember falling out of a tree. I remember being scared by a skunk. I remember a bad dream about there being monsters under my bed. I remember the teacher scolding us all when we were talking in class. None of those memories were pleasant at all. Memories are highly overrated.”
Pepper agreed, “You have a good point there, Piper. They are overrated and overvalued. Memories are just electrical signals that are stored in the neural network of the body, primarily in our brain cells. They are nothing more than an electrical charge, like the current running through a wire. It is only if you choose to allow those memories to travel through your brain in current time that they can bother you or please you. Memories are very much like illusions. They only exist if you choose to believe that they exist. If you are motivated to need them to exist.”
Peter then tried another approach. “What about Uncle Francis and Aunt Frances? You know, the relatives we call Frank and Fanny. Every time we go to visit them, they give us a chocolate bar. And they let us watch their big-screen TV. And they make the greatest desserts for our meals. And they are always joking around with Mom and Dad. And their big house by the beach is super cool!”
Piper mumbled, “But they also talk too loud. And Uncle Frank smokes his cigar around us, and it stinks. And Aunt Fanny has a weird accent that I can’t understand sometimes. And their ugly dog farts in the house.”
Pepper laughed, then proceeded, “Our reaction to all other people is based on our own prejudices. If people do something that we are familiar and comfortable with, then all of a sudden they are great people. But if those exact same people do something that we are not comfortable with, all of a sudden they are nasty people. But they are still the same people with their own set of habits, behaviors, thoughts, and methods of surviving in this crazy world. We project our own judgments onto them. They don’t cause those judgments to appear. They exist, and then we choose whether or not to react to their existence.”
Peter finally said, “We are almost at school. Let’s try one more thing. One more potential source of motivation. What about God? He seems to be loving, he seems to be helpful, and he inspires me to want to be a better person. And lots of people like him.”
Piper then argued, “First of all, what do you mean by ‘He’? Are you sure God is a ‘He”? Can’t it be a “She” instead? Whatever it is, there’s a major problem here. In the name of God, people kill each other, they torture each other, they argue constantly, they cause separation between people and families and cultures and cities and towns and countries. This idea of God does nothing but separate us from each other! And bad things will always happen to people, no matter whether you believe in God or not. How could that happen? How could any kind of “He” or “She” God allow such pain into the world?”
Pepper pause, and then completed the topic. “God is only what we choose it to be. The names and personalities of God are totally a human invention. When we need something outside of ourselves to blame or to thank or to criticize or to worship, we aren’t able to look at ourselves for those things. So we create this limited form that we can transfer many of our frustrations on to. The universe is not divided up into God and no God. It all is one thing. Which means that we are a direct part of that God that we choose to create, for whatever reason we choose to create it. Nothing more, nothing less. Your painful or your pleasurable connections to your belief about God are totally your own creation. Your own need to be motivated to do or not do something. Take responsibility by becoming more aware and awake to what you are.”
“Well,” responded Peter, “I guess that’s another way to look at it. I happen to like most of what I see around me. For me, it is a very pleasant world. I embrace and pursue every moment!”
“Silly snowflake. It’s also another way to not look at it, to avoid it,” grumbled Piper. “All the pain. And there is a lot of crap in this weary world that just bothers me. Sometimes it hurts just to be here.”
“It is also another way to just to watch it all exist, as it is,” finished Pepper. “What is is. That is all it is.”
*****
Here is an Exercise to Experience the Three Primary Motivators (Degrees of Sensory Stimulation):
Walk over to your stereo set or television. Turn it on very, very softly. Do something else for a few moments, so that the perception of the sound is lost in your new activity. This is an example of neutral perception. It is low in amplitude, and has no negative or positive effect upon your behavior or feelings.
Now turn up the sound to a comfortable range. If you are listening to music, dance around a bit to it. Pleasant, isn’t it? A moderate level of stimulation, connected to some previously created pleasant response activity….this is the pursuit of pleasure.
Now, finally, turn up the sound so that it is a real chore to ignore it, so that it bothers you. This will be different levels for different folks, because we each have different Belief Systems. Therefore, we each have different tolerances for loud sounds (amplitudes.) Eventually you may reach pain—threshold. Obviously, you’ve got some negative judgments attached to this annoying level of music or talk. It may begin to be a more distorted sound (even the electronic components themselves can only take so much amplitude and frequency!)
This exercise deals only with the sense of sound. To experience perception, pleasure, or pain in the other senses, set three different levels of stimulation up in an experiment.
If it is sight, try three intensities of light hitting the eyes. Have a dark room, a room with a nightlight, and then a place where you waste thousands of kilowatts of energy with light-bulbs all over the place!!
If it is touch, rub your arm very lightly, then more firmly, like a massage. 
Then scratch it very firmly, making those ugly little red marks on it. Please don’t get a sharp object to do this with. That’s called “attempted suicide,” and unfortunately, too many highly-complex Belief Systems perform at this level in order to achieve any sense of real feeling, touch, contact with the physical. This is never recommended for a person who wants to stay incarnate.
If you are dealing with taste, try some lemon juice, very watered down, slightly watered down, and full-strength. Then, if you are of age, add some special “spirits” to that lemonade, and see what effect it has on your body’s ability to perceive senses!!
For the sense of smell, drive past a dead skunk in the road. Far away – not too bad. Closer up – not actually pleasant, but you know you’ll survive. Pick it up in your hands, though, and you’ll know the real meaning of olfactory pain!!