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I’ve also been thinking a lot about primary versus secondary stories and the nature of primary stories. 

I am still not sure where I stand.  So I will try to think out loud for a little…..

 As Paul pointed out much of my understanding of primary stories comes from my background as a meditator . I do want to say however, that I do not think one needs to practice meditation to be able to shift perspectives on what is the primary story. Rather I think most people have an ability to learn to pay attention to different or perhaps more nuanced primary stories. 

In Buddhist philosophy there is a concept of naked or primordial awareness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzogchen . I don’t claim to understand (or have experienced) this at a very deep level, although I think I have had strong flashes of being in that state of awareness.

This is the type of awareness is encouraged in many types of meditation practice.   During naked awareness the mind is aware of all things (sensory input, feelings and thoughts) as they arise, but one does not become attached to them or judge them.  According to the tradition, spending prolonged time in this state allows a person to cultivate wisdom.

This raises a couple of questions when examined through the I-Function (I-F) Cognitive Unconscious (CU) narrative.  Is the I-F just learning to tell new stories in this state or is there an Observer watching the I-F as it tells stories?  Experientially most long time meditators talk about cultivating the Observer. 

So what is the observer?

On the one hand we can talk about the Observer as the I-F watching itself in a certain way (without attachment (identifying with the stories) or judgment (trying to reject the stories).  The observer is just a particular stance of the I-Function that allows it to do a certain type of meta-storytelling. 

It seems to me, without much evidence yet, that the observer is actually a little different that the I-F.  I know that some of the studies of meditation have shown specific types of neural patterns during intense stages of meditation. I think that just as the there are parts (and patterns) of the brain which are responsible for the story telling that we do, there are different parts and patterns that are responsible for the non-judgmental watching that is involved in meditative practice.  I don’t have a whole lot of observation to back that story up yet ( :

So back to primary and secondary stories.  In the context of meditation our goal is not necessarily to change the primary story but to quiet the story teller long enough to notice the flow of primary stories underneath the secondary story. In that sense I agree with Paul’s comment that there is not fixed definition for a primary story. However I do think there is an ability in meditation to watch carefully to see how the story teller constructs secondary stories from primary stories and how it constructs identity out of a series of secondary stories.  In doing so it gives people a certain degree of freedom to re-construct or abandon some of the elaborate secondary stories that they have constructed.

I hope that wasn’t too incoherent.  I am still trying to figure this stuff out. Anyway, I remain deeply curious about the following questions.

Should we speak about an Observer separate (in parts or pattern) from the I-Function?

As educators is there a value in cultivating the Observer as a stance?