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Studstill: Cybernetic Approach to Dzogchen 331asking too much of others may in turn reflect an unconscious request toenter into a covert agreement, i.e., “I won’t threaten your denial if youwon’t threaten mine.” “Niceness” in general may function in a similar way:a strategy to provoke reciprocal responses in others in order to confirmone’s self-image. 35 The ultimately egocentric nature of this behavior surfaceswhen the other does not respond as desired. He or she then becomesa threat, initiating a range of potential responses depending on the intensityof that threat (ignoring, judging, verbally attacking, physically attacking,and in the most extreme cases, murder).Since the circumstances of one’s predicament rarely coincide withidealized images, these types of constructive and inhibiting processes arenot limited to specifically threatening inputs. As Combs points out, “Anyonewho is awake and alive is regularly treated to demonstrations of theinadequacy of their formulas and protocols, whether these concern specificskills or life in general.” 36 More specifically, we are continuously confrontedby information that challenges our concepts of belonging, acceptance,and love—information either about the self specifically, or about theenvironment that reflects back on the self. The fact that there is always somedegree of discrepancy means that the system is always subject to somedegree of stress: when acceptance and abandonment becomes tied toconditions, life itself becomes a threatening input. For example, the inherentlyegocentric nature of ordinary consciousness is a continuous threat tothe ideal image most of us hold about ourselves as being “good or nice.” 37Homeostasis therefore requires continuous denial, correlated with a tendencyto increasingly withdraw from life and immerse attention in theinternal narrative. 38 In such a state, experience becomes “abstracted”out of the unpredictability of external sensation and into the moremanageable world of fantasy. 39 By disassociating from sensory input,experience becomes more malleable and therefore easier to conform toone’s constructs.In general, constructive-type processes involve focusing attention onfantasized, desired conditions or circumstances, either internally (throughthe internal narrative as described above) or externally (e.g., by seeking outconfirming inputs through popular entertainment). Such processes aresimultaneously inhibiting and may therefore be distinguished from thoseprocesses that function solely as inhibitors. This latter type may take twobasic forms: (1) numbing and distracting consciousness to dampen awarenessof dissonance and the pain associated with that dissonance, and (2)selective attention and other types of perceptual “filtering” or mediation.The first would include any type of substance reliance, substance abuse, oraddiction (including the “benign” substances and distractions that helpmany people get through their day: alcohol, tobacco, sugar, caffeine, andtelevision). Regarding the second, James Miller lists several cognitivemechanisms that inhibit information input, which may also—extending