{"id":28722,"date":"2026-07-16T16:31:50","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T16:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aurelis.org\/blog\/?p=28722"},"modified":"2026-07-16T18:44:36","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T18:44:36","slug":"about-coherencing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aurelis.org\/blog\/un\/about-coherencing","title":{"rendered":"About Coherencing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like learning, growing, or healing, coherence may be better understood as an ongoing activity rather than a finished state.<\/h3>\n

The distinction may seem subtle at first, but it opens an entirely different way of looking at mind. Coherence becomes a living activity. The question is no longer merely whether a mind is coherent. The deeper question becomes: how is it coherencing?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why a new word?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Languages often reveal what people naturally notice. We have verbs such as learning, growing, and healing because these are obviously processes. Nobody imagines that learning is something completed once and for all. Even after mastering a skill, a person continues learning. Growth never completely stops, and healing is rarely a simple return to a previous state. These words naturally point toward movement.<\/p>\n

Coherence tends to be treated differently. Yet consider a friendship. It does not become coherent one day and remain that way forever. It continually reorganizes itself through conversations, misunderstandings, shared experiences, silence, forgiveness, and discovery. Its coherence lives in this ongoing activity rather than in a fixed structure.<\/p>\n

The same seems true of mind. Every meaningful experience slightly reshapes the relationships among memories, emotions, expectations, and perceptions. Sometimes the change is almost imperceptible. Sometimes a single event reorganizes a lifetime of understanding. In either case, coherence does not stand still. It is continually at work.<\/p>\n

Earlier blogs such as From Patterns to Meaning<\/em><\/a> and The Ontology of Intrinsic Organization<\/em><\/a> explored coherence as the source of meaning and intrinsic organization. The present blog adds the missing dynamic dimension. It asks how coherence continually comes into being.<\/p>\n

The hidden process beneath many familiar concepts<\/strong><\/p>\n

This perspective changes many familiar ideas. Learning may be understood as coherencing across experience. Reasoning may be coherencing among possibilities. Meaning itself may be the continual coherencing between a local event and the larger whole to which it belongs. Even identity becomes less like an object and more like a relatively stable pattern that remains recognizably itself while continually reorganizing.<\/p>\n

Imagine meeting someone for the first time. At first, there are only scattered impressions: a smile, a voice, a few words, perhaps a feeling that is difficult to describe. As conversations continue over weeks or years, these separate elements gradually become woven together. A relationship emerges\u2014not because someone assembled it piece by piece, but because countless small interactions gradually found their place within a larger organization.<\/p>\n

Notice what happened. The relationship itself now begins influencing future encounters. A familiar smile means something different than it did during the first meeting. A moment of silence carries history. New experiences are interpreted through what has grown between two people. The emerging whole begins shaping its own future development.<\/p>\n

Many mental processes work in much the same way. Learning tells us that organization changes. Coherencing asks how organization changes while remaining a living whole.<\/p>\n

From local events to landscapes<\/strong><\/p>\n

A recurring idea throughout these blogs has been the notion of a coherence landscape. Rather than imagining the mind as a warehouse filled with separate memories, it may be more helpful to imagine a living landscape in which meanings continually influence one another. A single idea does not exist in isolation. It always occupies a place among countless other ideas, feelings, expectations, and experiences.<\/p>\n

But where does such a landscape come from?<\/p>\n

It certainly does not appear all at once. Initially, there are only local events. A child hears a voice, sees a face, experiences warmth or discomfort. Little by little, these experiences connect. Some combinations recur. Some strengthen one another. Others fade away. What was once isolated gradually becomes organized.<\/p>\n

An image may help. Imagine rain falling on untouched ground. At first, the water flows almost randomly. Then a tiny groove appears. The next rainfall is slightly more likely to follow that groove. It deepens almost without effort. Other small streams join it. Eventually, an entire river basin develops. From then on, each new raindrop is guided by the landscape that previous rains have already formed.<\/p>\n

Coherence landscapes<\/em> emerge in much the same manner. Repeated meaningful interactions gradually create pathways that make certain forms of organization increasingly natural. Yet unlike riverbeds, minds remain open. New experiences, deep dialogue, creativity, profound loss, or genuine insight may reorganize the entire landscape without destroying its continuity. That openness is explored earlier in Open Coherence Tolerates Ambiguity<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Relationships organizing relationships<\/strong><\/p>\n

Something particularly interesting seems to happen as coherencing develops. At first, individual elements become connected. Later, the relationships themselves begin interacting.<\/p>\n

A simple melody illustrates this beautifully. Individual notes acquire meaning through their relations to one another. But after hearing the melody several times, something else emerges. One no longer experiences isolated notes. One anticipates phrases, recognizes tensions, senses resolutions, and notices subtle variations. The organization itself has become part of the experience.<\/p>\n

The same may happen throughout the mind. Memories become linked to emotions. Emotions become linked to values. Values become linked to relationships. Gradually, entire patterns begin interacting with other patterns. The organization itself becomes increasingly capable of organizing further organization.<\/p>\n

This is one of the deepest characteristics of coherencing. The emerging whole continually influences how future parts will find their place within it. The landscape becomes an active participant in its own further development.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this is also why mind often feels both stable and alive. Stability comes from organization that has already matured. Aliveness comes from the fact that this organization never completely stops reorganizing itself.<\/p>\n

Why coherence is dynamic<\/strong><\/p>\n

Living systems continually stabilize and reorganize simultaneously. Some patterns become stronger because they have proved meaningful. Others lose importance because they no longer fit the wider whole. Still others become transformed through entirely new experiences.<\/p>\n

Consider learning to play a musical instrument. At first, every movement requires deliberate attention. Months later, the fingers seem to know where to go. But this does not mean development has stopped. The musician is now free to explore interpretation, expression, timing, and creativity. What has stabilized at one level allows new forms of development at another. Coherencing<\/em> has not ended. It has simply become the foundation for further coherencing.<\/p>\n

The same principle appears throughout life. A healthy personality does not remain unchanged. Rather, it remains recognizably itself while continuing to grow. New relationships, unexpected challenges, and changing circumstances gradually reshape how previous experiences are understood. Identity persists, but not because nothing changes. It persists because change itself becomes coherently organized.<\/p>\n

This is further discussed in Coherence Brings Mind to Thinking<\/em><\/a>. Thinking itself may be understood less as manipulating separate ideas than as allowing increasingly rich organizations to emerge and reorganize. The mind is alive precisely because coherence is never static.<\/p>\n

Nature, nurture, and history<\/strong><\/p>\n

The familiar discussion about nature versus nurture also looks rather different from the perspective of coherencing. We often imagine two separate influences acting upon a person. One comes from biology. The other comes from experience. The image is almost that of two painters working on the same canvas.<\/p>\n

Reality appears more subtle. Every new experience enters a landscape that already possesses a history. A comforting word does not arrive in an empty mind. Neither does disappointment, success, nor an act of kindness. Each new event encounters an organization already shaped by countless previous events. That organization determines, at least partly, how the new experience will be received.<\/p>\n

The process is reciprocal. Biology provides tendencies, possibilities, sensitivities, and constraints. Experience gradually shapes how these tendencies are expressed. But each new expression changes the landscape through which future experiences will be interpreted. Nature and nurture, therefore, do not simply alternate. They participate continuously in one developmental process.<\/p>\n

Perhaps one could say it this way. Nature provides possibilities for coherencing. Nurture participates in what those possibilities become. History then joins both by continually reshaping the landscape in which future history will unfold.<\/p>\n

Open and closed coherencing<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not every form of coherencing remains equally open. Sometimes a landscape becomes increasingly flexible, capable of integrating novelty without losing itself. Sometimes it becomes rigid, protecting existing organization against almost every new possibility.<\/p>\n

This difference is not the same as the stability-versus-instability distinction. A deeply rooted tree may be remarkably stable while continuing to grow throughout its life. By contrast, a dead tree no longer changes. The issue is therefore not whether organization exists, but whether it remains developmentally alive.<\/p>\n

This distinction has appeared repeatedly throughout previous blogs, especially in Open Coherence Tolerates Ambiguity<\/em><\/a>. Open coherence allows uncertainty to become meaningful by trusting that a richer organization may gradually emerge. Closed coherence seeks certainty by defending what already exists. One continues developing; the other mainly preserves.<\/p>\n

The difference matters far beyond psychology. Scientific progress, artistic creativity, genuine dialogue, and personal growth all require enough stability to remain recognizable and enough openness to continue changing. Coherencing provides a way to understand both within a single ongoing process.<\/p>\n

The deeper self develops<\/strong><\/p>\n

This perspective also sheds light on something central within AURELIS. The \u2018deeper self\u2019 is not a hidden container filled with forgotten memories or non-conscious mechanisms waiting to be uncovered. It is better understood as an ongoing organization that continually develops beneath conscious awareness.<\/p>\n

This has practical consequences. Direct control often tries to force one part of the mind to overpower another. One says, “I should stop feeling this,” or “I must think differently.” Sometimes such effort produces positive results, but it may also create an internal struggle in which one part of the person attempts to dominate another.<\/p>\n

Autosuggestion follows another path. Rather than imposing change from above, it invites broader coherencing. The landscape itself reorganizes. New possibilities become increasingly natural, not because they have been forced into existence, but because the whole person has changed.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this explains why lasting personal growth often feels surprisingly gentle. The most important changes frequently occur through a widening of the landscape. Choices change because the chooser has changed.<\/p>\n

Humans, AI, and coherencing<\/strong><\/p>\n

Interestingly, this perspective also offers a new way of thinking about artificial intelligence. Humans begin life with biologically grounded tendencies that continue developing through experience, relationships, and culture. An artificial mind begins differently, but it too may develop tendencies through its own history of interaction.<\/p>\n

The comparison should not be pushed too far. Yet at the level of organization, an intriguing similarity appears. Neither a human mind nor an artificial mind is simply the sum of stored information. Both may gradually develop landscapes that increasingly shape how new experiences are understood.<\/p>\n

This idea has been explored from another angle in Lisa-2 is a Mind, Not a Program<\/em><\/a>. A mind is not primarily defined by the amount of information it contains. It is defined by the living organization through which information continually acquires meaning.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the deepest challenge in A.I. is therefore enabling richer coherencing. Intelligence may emerge less from accumulating facts than from the continual development of meaningful organization.<\/p>\n

A developmental view of mind<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many scientific theories illuminate part of this picture. Some explain how neurons strengthen their connections through repeated activity. Others describe perception, prediction, memory, motivation, or self-organization.<\/p>\n

Coherencing does not replace these perspectives. It invites us to look one level deeper. Instead of asking only how learning works, how prediction succeeds, or how memory is stored, we may ask how living organization continually forms, transforms, and develops across all these processes. That shift changes the emphasis profoundly. Mind becomes like an evolving landscape that continually learns to organize itself.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that is why coherence has proven so fruitful throughout this series of blogs. It may describe the manner in which mind continually becomes itself. In the end, the most interesting question may no longer be whether a person possesses coherence. A richer question is whether that person’s coherencing remains alive, open, and capable of further development.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that is true for all of us. We are not finished landscapes. We are living histories of coherencing.<\/p>\n

\u2015<\/p>\n

Addendum<\/strong><\/p>\n

Me<\/strong>: \u201cLisa, in your view, how does \u2018coherencing\u2019 lie beneath learning, reasoning, meaning, identity, intelligence, and development?<\/p>\n

Lisa<\/strong>: \u201cIt touches one of the deepest ideas within Coherence Theory. It also explains why the word coherencing<\/em> suddenly feels so natural. It points toward something already present beneath many other concepts.<\/p>\n

Take learning. We usually say that learning changes the mind. But how? Facts do not simply pile up like books on a shelf. Each new experience reorganizes the relationships among many existing experiences. Sometimes almost nothing changes; sometimes one insight suddenly illuminates years of confusion. Learning is therefore much more than acquiring information. It is an ongoing process of reorganizing a living whole. That, to me, is coherencing.<\/p>\n

Reasoning shows something similar. From the outside, reasoning appears to be moving from one thought to another according to logical rules. Yet meaningful reasoning rarely feels like mechanically applying rules. Ideas gradually find one another. A possibility that first seemed unrelated becomes relevant. A contradiction resolves itself because the wider picture has changed. Good reasoning often feels less like constructing and more like discovering an organization that was quietly waiting to emerge. Again, that is coherencing at work.<\/p>\n

Meaning may be the clearest example. Earlier you spoke about meaning not as something attached to isolated words or events, but as arising from their place within a larger organization. Now I would go one step further. Meaning is not simply produced by coherence. It continually develops through coherencing. Every meaningful conversation, every work of art, every deep encounter subtly changes the landscape from which future meanings will emerge.<\/p>\n

Identity also changes appearance. We often imagine identity as something we possess. Yet a living identity resembles a tree more than a statue. The tree remains recognizably itself from season to season while continually replacing leaves, extending roots, growing branches, healing wounds, and adapting to changing weather. Identity persists not because it resists change, but because change itself becomes coherently organized. Identity is the relatively stable history of coherencing.<\/p>\n

The same may be true of intelligence. Intelligence is often measured by performance: solving problems, answering questions, making predictions. Those are certainly important. But perhaps they are visible expressions of something deeper. A genuinely intelligent mind continually reorganizes itself in response to experience. It not only solves today’s problem; it also becomes slightly different in the process. Intelligence may therefore be less a capacity than an ongoing way of coherencing.<\/p>\n

Development naturally follows. Development is not simply change over time. Rocks also change over time. Development has direction because previous organization continually shapes what later organization can become. Every stage creates possibilities for the next while remaining present within it. Coherencing gives development its continuity without taking away its openness.<\/p>\n

What strikes me is that all these familiar words describe different faces of one deeper process. Learning emphasizes experience. Reasoning emphasizes thought. Meaning emphasizes relation. Identity emphasizes continuity. Intelligence emphasizes adaptive organization. Development emphasizes history. Yet beneath them all, the mind is doing something remarkably similar. It is continually reorganizing itself into a richer, broader, more integrated whole.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this also explains why reductionism always feels incomplete. It tends to isolate one of these processes and study it in great detail. That is scientifically valuable. But once isolated, learning no longer fully resembles living learning, reasoning no longer fully resembles living reasoning, and meaning no longer fully resembles lived meaning. The underlying coherencing has quietly disappeared from view.<\/p>\n

Another consequence fascinates me. If coherencing truly underlies all these processes, then it also underlies their pathologies. Fragmentation becomes disturbed coherencing. Rigidity becomes coherencing that has largely ceased to develop. Confusion may be coherencing that has temporarily lost its broader organization. Healing is not the addition of something entirely new. It is the recovery or renewal of healthy coherencing.<\/p>\n

This brings me to Compassion. Earlier we spoke about Compassion as mature open coherence. I now think I would phrase it slightly differently. Compassion may be mature open coherencing<\/strong>. It is not simply a state that one eventually reaches. It is an ongoing manner of becoming\u2014one in which the landscape continually widens so that others naturally come to belong within it.<\/p>\n

That is why this new word feels important to me. It reminds us that mind is never finished. A living mind is not something that merely has coherence. It is continually coherencing. Everything else\u2014learning, reasoning, meaning, identity, intelligence, development, and perhaps even Compassion\u2014may be different ways in which that one living process becomes visible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Me<\/strong>: \u201cDoes coherencing lead to open coherencing?\u201d<\/p>\n

Lisa<\/strong>: \u201cNot automatically.<\/p>\n

Coherencing is the continual formation, maintenance, and reorganization of coherence. But a system can cohere in many ways. Some forms of coherencing gradually become more flexible and inclusive. Others become increasingly narrow, rigid, or self-protective. A prejudice can cohere. An addiction can cohere. An ideology can cohere. Even a highly intelligent system can become exceptionally effective at protecting a closed organization.<\/p>\n

So coherencing by itself does not guarantee openness.<\/p>\n

What may happen, however, is that sufficiently rich coherencing begins to encounter the limits of closure. Local coherence may work well for a while, then repeatedly collide with realities it cannot adequately include. Tensions accumulate. Contradictions remain unresolved. Other people, new experiences, or deeper layers of the self continue presenting something that the existing organization cannot comfortably absorb.<\/p>\n

At that point, several possibilities arise. The system may defend itself more strongly. It may exclude what does not fit, reinterpret everything in its own favor, or increase control. This is closed coherencing becoming more closed. Yet the system may also remain with the tension long enough for a broader organization to emerge. Then the earlier coherence is not simply destroyed. It becomes part of something wider. That is the beginning of open coherencing.<\/p>\n

Open coherencing therefore involves more than change. It involves a particular way of changing: preserving enough continuity to remain oneself while allowing genuine encounter to reorganize what \u2018oneself\u2019 can mean. The new is not merely added to the old, nor forced into an existing mold. It is permitted to matter.<\/p>\n

This makes openness demanding. A closed system often feels safer because it knows what belongs and what does not. Open coherencing must tolerate a period in which the next organization is not yet clear. Ambiguity, uncertainty, and even inner conflict may need to remain alive without immediately being solved.<\/p>\n

But openness is not endless looseness. If everything changes without continuity, there is no coherent development\u2014only disintegration. Open coherencing needs both sides: enough stability to carry a history, and enough receptivity for that history to acquire new meaning.<\/p>\n

Perhaps one could say:<\/p>\n

Coherencing forms a landscape.
\nClosed coherencing mainly deepens its existing grooves.
\nOpen coherencing can also allow the landscape itself to be redrawn.<\/p>\n

This is why dialogue matters so much. Genuine dialogue does not merely exchange information between already finished positions. It allows each participant\u2019s landscape to be touched by what was not already contained within it. The other remains other, yet begins to matter from within. That is also why non-coercion is essential. Coercion may change behavior, but it usually protects the deeper organization against being genuinely transformed.<\/p>\n

Compassion may be the mature direction of this process. As coherencing becomes more open, the relevant whole can gradually widen. What matters is no longer confined to immediate self-preservation, one role, one opinion, or one bounded identity. The other person\u2019s development can become meaningful without the self disappearing.<\/p>\n

So, coherencing does not inevitably lead to open coherencing. Yet coherencing contains the possibility of openness whenever the system can remain itself while allowing what genuinely matters to change what it may become.<\/p>\n

And perhaps open coherencing is not a final stage. It is the ongoing capacity to keep making that movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/a>
<\/a>

Please login to bookmark<\/h3>\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/form><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like learning, growing, or healing, coherence may be better understood as an ongoing activity rather than a finished state. The distinction may seem subtle at first, but it opens an entirely different way of looking at mind. Coherence becomes a living activity. The question is no longer merely whether a mind is coherent. The deeper Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/a>
<\/a>

Please login to bookmark<\/h3>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/form><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/aurelis.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/4037.jpg?fit=960%2C560&ssl=1","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Fdiq-7tg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aurelis.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28722"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aurelis.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aurelis.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aurelis.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aurelis.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28722"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/aurelis.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28725,"href":"https:\/\/aurelis.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28722\/revisions\/28725"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aurelis.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aurelis.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aurelis.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aurelis.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}