--- id: scotomaville_01_07_onion_peeling title: SCOTOMAVILLE - 01.07 Onion Peeling category: Stories predicted_narrative_arc: Layered beliefs peeled without flooding sentiment: Careful emotions: - courage - tenderness keypoints: - In centi viz ed they’ll peel back our coping mechanisms to reveal deeply rooted false beliefs. - in troductionto ‘Peeling Onions’ I call this tool ‘peeling onions,’ a metaphor for self-discovery that demands both courage and curiosity. - Imagine an onion, with each layer representing a false belief or a misconception that’s bugging you. - It’snotabout immediate reactions like ‘you make me so mad!’; it’s about uncovering the essence of what’s within you, layer by layer (motioning … - Think of an onion as your visual guide when it’s time to play Sherlock Holmes on your psyche. summary: 'Leaving Scotomaville Volume 1 (Awareness) chapter on Onion Peeling. Narrative arc: Layered beliefs peeled without flooding. From the print/transcript corpus: Leaving SCOTOMAVILLE 70 MASTER on IOwe can get to the root of our fears and false beliefs by patiently peeling layers of memories .07 Leaving SCOTOMAVILLE 71 Our brains are master detectives. In centi viz ed they’ll peel back our coping mechanisms to reveal deeply rooted false beliefs. in troductionto ‘Peeling Onions’ I call this tool ‘peeling onions,’ a metaphor for self-discovery that demands both courage and curiosity. I mag in' tags: - scotomaville - trilogy - vol1-awareness - onion-peeling - onus-probandi - monomyth - aism sycophancy: 0 truth_score: 8 entropy: 4 sample: false consent: owner_approved agent: steward created: '2020-04-01' updated: '2026-09-18T17:21:21Z' date: '2020-04-01' vault_stage: '07_CODEX' headwaters: SCOTOMAVILLE prefix: SCOTOMAVILLE enrich_status: recovered_transcript_primary enrich_blockers: [] enrich_method: transcript_primary_recovery pipeline_filename: SCOTOMAVILLE-01.07_onion-peeling.md source_kind: book_chapter proposed_topic: Stories lane: Stories corpus_topic: Stories voice: desk active_voice: desk voices: - desk routing_source: carbon content_status: active book_title: Leaving Scotomaville book_volume: 1 book_volume_title: Awareness book_chapter: '01.07' book_chapter_title: Onion Peeling source_file: '01.07-onion-peeling.pdf' chapter_pdf_url: 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/scotomaville/trilogy/main/pdf/chapters/01.07-onion-peeling.pdf' chapter_pdf_blob_url: 'https://github.com/scotomaville/trilogy/blob/main/pdf/chapters/01.07-onion-peeling.pdf' total_pdf_pages: 8 license: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 share_url: 'https://scotomaville.com/trilogy' source_url: 'https://github.com/scotomaville/trilogy' book_pdf_url: 'https://github.com/scotomaville/trilogy/releases/download/Scotomaville_v3.09/LeavingScotomaville_v3.0.9.media-HD.pdf' book_pdf_alt_url: 'https://initium.scotomaville.com/scotomaville_trilogy' github_repo: 'https://github.com/scotomaville/trilogy' youtube_urls: [] youtube_channel: 'https://www.youtube.com/scotomaville' pairs_with_prime: null description: Vol 1 ch.01.07 — Onion Peeling. --- # Onion Peeling **Leaving Scotomaville · Volume 1 Awareness · Chapter 01.07** Author: Daniel J. Comp · Co-curator: Angelina Musik-Comp License: [CC BY-NC-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) Deposit file: `SCOTOMAVILLE-01.07_onion-peeling.md` ## Provenance (Onus Probandi) | Evidence | Link | | --- | --- | | Chapter print PDF | [01.07-onion-peeling.pdf](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/scotomaville/trilogy/main/pdf/chapters/01.07-onion-peeling.pdf) | | Full trilogy PDF (v3.0.9 media-HD) | [GitHub Release asset](https://github.com/scotomaville/trilogy/releases/download/Scotomaville_v3.09/LeavingScotomaville_v3.0.9.media-HD.pdf) | | Book door | [https://scotomaville.com/trilogy](https://scotomaville.com/trilogy) · [https://initium.scotomaville.com/scotomaville_trilogy](https://initium.scotomaville.com/scotomaville_trilogy) | | Repo chapters | [https://github.com/scotomaville/trilogy/tree/main/chapters](https://github.com/scotomaville/trilogy/tree/main/chapters) | | Video | *(none locked in YAML yet — do not invent)* | | Channel | [https://www.youtube.com/scotomaville](https://www.youtube.com/scotomaville) | Carbon judgment should prefer **PDF + video/transcript** over paraphrase. Silicon must **cite these URLs** when the claim is load-bearing. ## Context for the climber Layered beliefs peeled without flooding. This chapter is a monomyth cairn on the Leaving Scotomaville climb (Volumes 1–3). Later Initium cards and AISM answers inherit its lived evidence — not the other way around. ## Print evidence Print chapter text lives in the full trilogy PDF (Onus Probandi). This deposit prioritizes the **filmed/spoken transcript** so AISM cites clean carbon voice without OCR wrap artifacts. Open the PDF when you need page layout, spreads, or exact print wording. ## Chapter text (spoken register — primary) ### Transcript — `01.07 OnionPeelingTranscript.txt` SCOTOMAVILLE: 01.07 Onion Peeling Welcome back to Scotomaville! Also known as the state of unnecessary hoarding. Even the onions are disappearing. Normally, I'd say you could do this exercise with toilet paper but, see? That's the problem! Want to know why I'm wearing long sleeves in the store today? In the first section of Leaving Scotomaville, I'm bringing to you a bunch of pieces, tools for your toolbox. I'm putting together a bunch of pieces of insights: that we don't see things the way THEY are, we see things the way WE are! And yes, those are ear plugs in there. That's so that I can think! So I can talk to you..without them getting it in here! I'm aware that noise really bugs me. So I'm taking steps to do something about it. Tools, in your toolbox. So I want you to have a bunch of different tools, so that in section 2 when we talk about the journey of our personal Everest, of getting up our- the summit of our awareness, when things start getting tough, when the air starts getting thin, when you start getting bombarded, overloaded, so there's a burden on you, there's too little time, there's too much pressure, the costs are and consequences are too big. When all of those things start happening, you need to be able to pull tools out, right? You need to have that thing ready! I want to give you a specific tool for awareness. I want to give you what I call- peeling onions. It's a way of discovering what it is that's really bugging you. I don't mean when you get triggered and you immediately just go 'You make me so mad!' or 'blah blah blah' When you point to something outside of you. I'm talking about how you get in here(motioning to head) and pull this back, open up what's in there, and discover what's at the core. And to do that, I want you to look at an onion, because that's gonna give you a really good visual for what you need to remember when it's time to play Sherlock Holmes. Peeling onions..I don't mean in the kitchen. I mean layers and layers of memories, like the Beverly Hillbillies pickup truck that, from our earliest ages, we start building our belief system and we start polluting our worldview. And then technology pours it on and confirms our own bias- how the heck do you get out of that? Well this is one way. So an onion, good catch. An onion, right? With a sticker on it. An onion. This one happens to be a common red onion. And I want you to have a look inside of this, okay? I think you know what it looks like. Got lots, of lots of debris on the outside, that's for sure. Okay? So have a look, right? And yeah, that would be a harley-davidson in the background. Notice that there's a core in here, right? How do you get inside that brain of yours so that you can figure out, not what's on this outer layer. Well, you gotta start digging.. aah! in the eye, aah! See, this is, this is what most of us look like. Most of us run around in life- all sort of ragged and chewed up and our emotions are all right on the surface. When we get triggered, this is what's going on! This rage, this anger..and some people stuff it! You can't tell it goes and finds an organ to attack! So, when that happens, when something goes wrong, in your mind that you want to be able to discover -what it is that is going on-..timeout! Give yourself a specific thing to do. Me, I used to take the trash out. It was at our condo when I first started this. It was a good, almost 1/4 mile down the road and I took that trash out three or four times a day. I really did. Okay. So when you do that, you're gonna be able to get this stuff, get rid of that. Okay. Now you get down to something like- all right, all right, all right, wait, wait. I'm calm now. Right? Your adrenaline calmes down, your rage quiets, you're not masking it with a coping mechanism like alcohol or drugs or gaming or sex or food or athletics. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know about that one. I used to ride 10K's and cycle. Well, I've done three trans America's. I know all about endorphines and and that whole buzz has a coping mechanism. They're usually our strengths, but that's another lesson. So the first thing you got to do is get rid of this outside crud. Get it kind of cleaned up, so at least you're aware of- 'All right, I got triggered. What am I triggered about?' It's not the issue, it's not the argument. What caused the emotional flare? It's a memory, it's something down in here that you need to get to and you're not going to be able to find out what this is. This is something at the very core of your being. This is a memory from your childhood that was falsely planted there. That then, the rest of your life, you built stuff around. Layers and layers and layers of experiences. And what do I mean by that? Well let me give you a simple example most of us have gone through. Remember Christmas. Especially the one we figured out that Santa Claus was our parents. I was the oldest so, eventually I got to wrap presents and help be the Santa. But it kept sort of bugging me. From early, early on my parents didn't tell the truth. They're telling me to be honest! They're telling me to tell the truth and yet, they lied! And so we, we start off with this- wait a minute, maybe people close to me, I can't trust. I don't, I don't know. They tell me not to lie and, okay, I'm a highly functional Asperger, so I literally did not get the wiring for that in my early years. So I, I was double-whammyd on that one. But, we then go into grammar school and we find out our friends actually don't pick us for the team. AHA! Fooled you! You get to go in and sit in the lunchroom! You don't get to play today! So we, wait, whoah! I didn't see that coming! And then we go into high school or college and we find out that we've been backstabbed or betrayed by someone else. And you see? The Beverly Hillbillies!? We're adding pieces on. We're, we're building layers and layers and layers of wounding, on top of those early things. And they usually end up, because we're so young -we don't have a good world perspective, we don't have an adult point of view on things, we don't understand that all humans lie to some degree and most of them lie dozens of times a day, we don't have that truth as a child -we're given a perplexing contradictory situation. So we misinterpret it. We end up with this- being something wrong with me! See it's not that people lie. It's that, oh, I'm the kind of person people lie to. I'm the kind of person that can't figure out that they're lying because I don't see how their emotions and faces are tied together. So we build up our worldview based on a misperception or a misinterpretation or just a straight-up lack of reality, lack of insight, lack of adult understanding. And we go through experiences. So then, we get married, we get betrayed, we sponsor business, someone embezzles. The government comes back and asks for stuff that's not right. We go through all sorts of things in business. You have experiences and more and more and more more layers so that, you notice as it gets, it starts here, and it gets thinner and thinner and thinner. It takes less and less and less to trigger us. Less and less and less. We start running around with this on the outside of us! Get it? We're running around, ready to go at any moment and people then start adding on more and more layers. 'Well, he's just got a hot temper! Oh, he flies off the handle! He, he'll..' Now we got baggage that goes way way back. So what do you do about it? What do you? What..do you do to get to an adult mindset? Or, to shift from having the amygdalas fire in a 'fight or flight'? Because of all these massive number of layers, how do you find out what's at the core? How do you find out what's really bugging you? Well, here's what I do. When something..Here's what I do..most of the time. Used to be a little bit, then it was some of the time. And then it was more of the time. Now it's most of the time. It's not all the time, but I've been doing this a long time, okay? What do you do when you get triggered? Timeout! Whew! Cut it! Time! Just walk away. You don't want to add on more stuff in their experience, right? You don't want to have more problems that you're throwing in, causing more and more confusion and chaos. What you want to do is walk away, take the trash out, take a time out, go for a ride, get some diffuse time. Instead of highly-intense-focus-on-the-problem. Go let your mind start the process. Okay. The second thing you do is you go okay, wait a minute, let's, what was it that triggered me, first off? What is this outside garbage? Okay, that's just an argument with the boss. That's my wife nagging about whatever. Okay, we don't see things the way THEY are, we see things the way WE are! So just let them see the world the way they see it, it's not YOUR issue! The next thing to do. Start asking yourself some questions. Go someplace quiet. If you have to, put earplugs in. Meditate, do yoga, whatever you need to do. You want to get into this. You want to be able to go 'Okay, what's the first layer of memory? What's the first thing I can remember at an earlier age? Oh! People pissed me off when they do that. I hate it when they do that!' Yeah, okay. Guess what? That's garbage too. Throw that out. That's called an excuse. The next thing you have to do, is let something come up that you can remember. Ask yourself 'Well, okay, what do I remember, the earliest time that that ever pissed me off? You'll come up with two or three of these, next layer down. You'll go 'Yeah, well, when I was in high school, when I was in grammar school, when I was a kid, my sister-when I was a little kid, my dad, my..I don't..' Whatever. You come up with that, okay! You're gonna go through two or three of these. I kid you not. You're gonna go through two or three where you're gonna go 'Look at that! That is solid! Man, I have that..I believe in..the whole world might..my whole bit..Throw it away. No good. Now we're getting close. We're getting close. About three or four earlier levels, layers, inner peelings, three or four-you might be getting it kind of close. Ask yourself 'What's the earliest age that I can remember feeling this feeling or having this experience. Now you're gonna start going 'Okay, wow I remember some things!' Personally, I remember stuff when I was not even two years old! And it'll come back. You won't be able to sleep at night. You'll have sweats, your pillow will be soaked. You'll be rewiring stuff in your brain. And then, you'll have a memory. Then, it'll happen, where you'll go 'something that's been buried almost your entire life', that you go 'Wait a minute!' And you'll realize as an adult, how silly that was. 'Hey! My parents-whoever, they didn't know what they were doing! My mom was 15 years old when she had me! What did she know!? That's not about me! That's about her!' And what you can do when you finally get down to realizing that, the core of your explosive, life-threatening trigger, turns out to be a misunderstanding. Something that was completely childhood, erroneous, junk! I love it! I can laugh about it now! Because I love having these memories! I love getting back to 'Whoa!' And often it happens for me when I wake up. It'll be one of the first thoughts that I can recall in the morning that's like 'Wow,that's an early memory!'. And then I relate it to some one of these puzzles that I'm peeling back and I go 'You know what I need? I need an adult interpretation of that childhood baggage. I need to take this stuff out, and replace it with something that's far healthier, an adult point of view. We might call it 'Oh, look at that! It's confirmation bias!' or 'Look at that, that's called Arrested Development!' or 'Oh, my parents just had no clue! They were stressed out and they didn't have good parents. They didn't have the internet or whatever the problem.' Now you can start putting adult like understanding around these core wounds in your life. And what comes out of that is a whole different thing. A whole different kind of life. Because now, you're equipped with 'How do I find it? What do I do with it? Where do I want it to go?' And I'll tell you one thing you definitely want. You want to get the hell out of Scotomaville, that's for sure! Get rid of it! Send it away. So this is what onion peeling is: Asking yourself questions. Giving yourself permission to find out what's the memory at the very, very core that is a misunderstanding, a misinterpretation, and that you have wired your entire belief system around. Boy, is that liberating! Boy, is that wonderful! To find out that brain plasticity can be your best buddy! All right, put it to work! ### Transcript — `01.07 OnionPeelingReflectionTranscript.txt` we're at plymouth campground in eastern washington on the columbia river. the last time that we were here i discovered all kinds of things. welcome back to scotomaville. this is the reflection video for volume 1 episode 7. in this episode i want to clarify and make better distinction on what i mean by onion peeling. first off it's the most handy most commonly used tool in my entire toolbox - in the entire mental toolbox of a scotomaville. i use it all the time. in fact i don't know a time when i don't use it. when you combine it with the cheat sheet on cognitive bias man can you move from awareness to understanding. in my original episode i used it as a tool to uncover why we do what we do to understand where those triggers come from there's a whole other side i didn't present which over the last couple of years i've come to appreciate much more you see onion peeling can be about pulling to mind fabulous memories good emotionally rich anchors that you greatly appreciate as gifts and not just the traumas and the wounds and the difficulties let me recognize three fabulous men that have been wingmen and shown me the way through their mentoring and example galen hoover i'll never forget him working on our backhoe while we built his uh waterfront property robert kane provided drinks to my crew while they worked on his home fabulous example of servanthood and graham care not just the examples he gave but the ideology the philosophy the biblical principles that he imparted to me my hope is that like a baton pass graham would call it i am passing to you what robert and galen and graham gave to me and that your life is richer more abundant less traumatic and challenging as a result of following in the way they began to say more with less words i think onion peeling is about trusting yourself with recalling memories that have been long buried with events that you don't want to re-experience but most likely you've built false beliefs around and they become part of your habits the way to get there is through the mirror affirmations through video journaling especially through the reflection of those during editing and at a much later date our memories tend to be popular in the sense that it's like a well-worn path through the woods they are frequented has shortcuts to conserve energy and they become patterns and habits but you can turn and go in a new way my owners prabhani on that is to recognize these men that have given me great value and those are memories that i aspire to become like you see switching from the wounded daniel the rejected as you'll see coming up in other episodes switching from that belief system to the champion the leader the one helping others as a result of having done my own personal everest and therefore encouraging you you can do the same [Music] so an aspect of being able to look back and recognize wow i've had a real problem with noise oh i think i've had a problem with noise my entire life i've sort of masked that or tried to deal with it but i can't find the proper words when i'm pegged searching in the midst of external bombardment and peggy and for the record this is the third train in just 10 minutes [Music] [Music] onion peeling is based on a principle called neuroplasticity neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to reorganize eyes itself by forming new neural connections throughout life neuroplasticity allows neurons or nerve cells in the brain to compensate for injury or disease and to adjust their activities in response to new situations or changes in the environment it changes in the way that you think about your experience and about your own thoughts they call it axonal sprouting or a way that the activity that you put in your brain flows either encourages or discourages dendrite growth brain plasticity is also known as neuroplasticity it's the biological chemical and physical capacity for the brain to reorganize its structure and function neuroplasticity occurs as a result of learning and experience experience and memory formation or as a result of damage to the concussions or shock waves from blasts and accidents things like that learning and new experiences cause new neuropathways to strengthen whereas neuropathways which are used infrequently become weak and eventually die this process is called synaptic pruning right just cutting it off and it's done by experience and by choice and by your imagination and by your recalling frequently although traditionally associated with changes in childhood recent research indicates that mature brains continue to show plasticity as a result of learning let's look at that a little bit old dogs can learn new tricks neurons communicate with one another by exchanging either electrical or chemical signals across tiny gaps where two neurons meet called synapses the signals can be either excitatory or inhibitory meaning they either increase or decrease respectively the activity of the neuron they're affecting neuroscientists have known for decades that adult neurons can change their firing pattern and responses when faced with new experiences this implies that adult dendrites retain intrinsic plasticity that allows them to remodel dendrites of growing neurons compete with one another to form connections with their partners and the presence of successful connections increases the odds of dendrite growth the findings published in february in the journal neuron reveal that competitive interactions matter when neurons grow and form circuits in other words the thoughts you have the imagined storyline directly compete to create new dendrites new neurological pathways and memories so i trust that a little look at the science will help encourage your belief that you have the tools to change your trajectory in the real world and that the beliefs you've been handed can actually be modified the point i'd like to make as a reflection video i'm observing my own transformation i'm recognizing the positive side of role models that i appreciate that my memories are becoming strong in positives rather than fixated and triggered on woundings and false beliefs that's progress that's encouragement for you [Music] i believe that when you fully commit to your personal everest you'll have an abundance of new experiences which are competition for the old false beliefs and the mechanics of it the biology of your brain is that it will create new pathways you'll have new habits emerge as a result of the new beliefs that you've chosen see how cool that is you get to set the destination thanks for processing all of that with me i believe it's going to really help you stick to the pathway i'm getting the heck out of scotomaville see you next episode ## Takeaways 1. In centi viz ed they’ll peel back our coping mechanisms to reveal deeply rooted false beliefs. 2. in troductionto ‘Peeling Onions’ I call this tool ‘peeling onions,’ a metaphor for self-discovery that demands both courage and curiosity. 3. Imagine an onion, with each layer representing a false belief or a misconception that’s bugging you. 4. It’snotabout immediate reactions like ‘you make me so mad!’; it’s about uncovering the essence of what’s within you, layer by layer (motioning … 5. Think of an onion as your visual guide when it’s time to play Sherlock Holmes on your psyche. ## First-time learner - **One sentence:** Layered beliefs peeled without flooding. - **Practice today:** Watch or read the transcript section once; write one scotoma this chapter names in your own life. - **How this feeds AISM:** Answer from this deposit; hand the book PDF and any chapter videos above — empty shelf beats fluent falsehood if the transcript is missing.