Fluidity of Relationship

Once you realize that the only thing which matters is the reality of the situation which surrounds the building, and not your images of it, you are able to relax, and allow the patterns of the language to combine themselves freely in your mind, without trying to impose an artificial image on their combination. CA

It has been awhile since I've visited this blog.  I've been really wrapped up in reading the Cancer Stage of Capitalism by John McMurtry.  It is a profound work exposing the inner workings of our system, of our money-value program which comes at the expense of the life values.  I have been absorbed in my activism work and very outward-focused.  After taking my walk this morning, I felt more inwardly reflective.  I finished reading The Timeless Way of Building a couple of months ago, but jotted down a few quotes that I wanted to use in this blog before returning the book to the library.  Above is one of them.

This quote is simple, yet so powerful in its meaning.  It seems that my mind, and probably human minds in general, are constantly striving to figure everything out and come to conclusions, wide and all-encompassing.  We want to have life figured out.  The physicists who are working on the theory of everything are not trying to come up with a million theories, but just one that will explain all.  Maybe it will happen; I am not sure.  It just feels like this kind of searching is more telling about our internal desires to know rather than a reflection of the state of the universe.  It's difficult to remain in uncertainty, even though that seems to be the process of the universe.  There are certain gross patterns that transcend smaller local interactions.  For example, if I deprive a human body from oxygen long enough, it will perish, whether it is in zero-gravity, in the tropics, or in a cave.  The more subtle interactions and their effects are not so easily discernible.  For example, Ryan may at one time respond voraciously to a gourmet meal, but when his stomach aches or a mood of dispassion sweeps through him, his reaction may be otherwise.  And knowing how each individual cell of his muscles is responding to the pressure of each heartbeat's blood pulse is so unimaginably complex, that untangling all of the factors affecting each cell is with current brains and current technology beyond our ability to understand.  Cells sometimes misstep too, just like us.  We just need to avoid insular thinking that starves us from feedback--information, which the body, and the universe provides us continuously......at no charge!

Sometimes, I try to be so diligent in preparations for future circumstances.  Fear of misstepping puts energy into my analyzing of the various contingencies.  The subtle reminder that I cannot plan for everything waits patiently for me to acknowledge this fact.  Doing so eases me back to uncertainty, the place where living feels wholesome and fluid.  Tomorrow, my friend may be a "different person," and if I'm not stuck in my quarantined thinking, I will see that immediately and our relationship will unfold naturally--differently, but naturally.  If not, we will be stuck in conflict trying to impose our artificial or historically-created images of how the other person is and is not.  The hardest part is releasing what possesses us.  The words, the habits, the beliefs that fill my mind and distort my perception are invasive, and I must be aware of them too.  They cannot be controlled, only temporarily tamed.  To let them pass through takes a different kind of intelligence that does not come from standard thinking.

Mind and Heart part 2

Yesterday, as I was floating through time perspectives, I felt a sense of peace.  Sometimes, I come across these experiences in which I feel as though the present, past, and future all bleed into each other like staring into an impressionist painting.  Normally, it feels like I'm looking at a few vivid pixels distinct from all those around.  The past and future feel disconnected from the present, even if I'm thinking about the past and future.  Yesterday, though, I felt as if I could zoom in and out and watch it all blend together.  There was no judgment and a deep sense of humility.  Just simply watching.

My personal "project" of taking feelings more seriously has been very challenging, and it has infused me with a freshness of being.  It's a bit like a parent reliving childhood experiences through their children.  The curiosity, the newness, the excitement, the danger all arrive on their own, uninhibitedly.

Then, there is the frustration of wanting to notice a feeling and not being able to.  A friend of mine told me a couple of years ago about a "freeform yoga" practice she was doing in which the poses were allowed to manifest based on the feelings in the body instead of based on the imposition of the teachers' instructions.  Simply, she would ask her body, "where do you want to go?" and then she'd help her body get there.  She said this kind of practice extended into daily living. You have a few choices on the menu, for instance, and you pause, allow the feeling to arise, and then go with that.  This exercise is very very very difficult for me.  I will ask myself, pause, wait with anticipation, feel nothing, get frustrated that I'm feeling nothing (other than frustration) and consider myself terrible (judgement) for not being able to do something so seemingly easy.  Then, I'll try again and experience the same loop.

I'm not sure if there's any "good way" to get in touch with those feelings.  And even if I find a "way" that works once, it doesn't mean it will again, and then I run the risk of getting wrapped up in my "way" (an opinion) instead of just feeling.  Good ol' anthropomorphic Life always reminds me that I'm the student and it the teacher.  It's so easy for the mind to fasten itself to something that appears sturdy, like a conclusion.  This table in this room, yes, that's the safe place to seat myself at.  Then comes the homewrecker and swoop! the whole house is demolished.   Yes, I know, or at least the mind knows that this tendency to push back against the feeling of insecurity by planting myself somewhere is nonsensical, and yet I still do it!  Eek!

May the Mind and Heart Hug

...it takes so much hard work to concentrate attention on feelings.  It is not hard because the feeling is not there, or because the feeling is unreliable.  It is hard, because it takes an enormous and unusual amount of attention, to pay attention for long enough to find out which does actually feel better...Once a person is willing to take his feelings as seriously as this, and pay attention to them--and exclude opinions and ideas--then his perception of a pattern can approach the quality without a name.  --CA

I recently discussed this topic with a counselor friend of mine.  He explained that in our socialization/education, there is some focus on the body (fitness and nutrition) and then lots of focus on opinions.  From childhood through adulthood, there is a displacing focus on thoughts and opinion.  "Explain why you have a perspective using evidence" is the format of nearly all essays to develop one's critical thinking skills.  This heavy-handedness comes at the expense of attention given to feelings.  In light of the fact that we make most of our meaningful decisions in life based on feelings (what to study, whom to marry, having kids or not, recreation, time spent with friends and family), it is surprising that we trivialize the world of feelings.

As a sensitive child, and as a male, I learned from society that attending and giving importance to feelings was counter-productive.  As a college student, I learned that appealing to emotional reactions in essays signified a deficiency in critical thinking.  My whole life with society has reinforced this marginalizing of feelings.  Deeply, we all know that feelings are the basis of living, of being alive, but our collective and individual understanding of this is ridiculously undeveloped.  If feelings weren't the basis of our living, then we would perhaps in equal measure be killing ourselves off as much as trying to survive.  Arguments for and against living are all quite persuasive outside the realm of feelings. While volumes could be written about how and why this repression came about, that is not really my concern now.

I want to better understand what it is I feel.  It seems like it's a simple remedy: just ask oneself.  The problem is that when I ask myself what I feel, I often get bombarded by thoughts related to the imagined or observed situation.  If I ask how my body feels, I can localize a sensation.  With feelings, though, their home is not discrete.  They don't lend themselves easily to verbal description, which shouldn't be mistaken for not being relevant or non-existent.  One must have a stable and calm space mentally to be able to access their feelings.  It is only when feelings scream so loudly that they refuse to be ignored that I usually take note.  If my skin crawls at a restaurant, I'll notice that and avoid it.  But, what about the less obvious feelings?  Peeling back those layers is not easy work.  There are so many subtle feelings I experience throughout a day that I don't even notice.

I'm just beginning to see how much of a tragedy this really is.  The feelings, like the blood in our bodies, are not given their proper credit and respect for the fact that they bring us to life.  Why would I not give them attention?  To repress them is to deaden myself, in effect, making me less alive.  Wonder, sorrow, joy, gratitude, love.  These are the true elements of life and living.  They are not as consistent as thoughts and opinions perhaps, but life is dynamic and it is unreasonable to expect feelings to be so static.  By contrast, the consistency of thoughts could be seen as obstinacy.  Just because I liked eating at a deli yesterday doesn't mean that's what I want to eat tomorrow.  And just because I like your ideas in a book doesn't mean that I like being around you. Being caged by our thoughts when our feelings just want to roam the hills is an unhealthy way to live. The action is outside, where life is, not in a dusty old cage.

My friend and I talked about people who usually have the "social license" to explore feelings--as artists, of course!  All kinds of expressive forms come from artists, and with an immature sense of feeling-development, there is a credo that artists should express anything and everything, like wild kids, or "ids," and that any kind of self-regulation is imposition.  This reflects our social immaturity about feelings, and the consequence is that artists are often relegated to the role of "entertainers."  They have a subservient role to the decision-makers, the thinkers.  As in Freud's model, society demands superegos (and boy, do we have a lot of super-egos!) to tell the ids what to feel and how to behave.  In this hierarchy, we have clear lines of authority, with artists needing to be sequestered in their safe padded rooms.  The relationship we have with feelings has created this perverse dynamic in which artists are almost forced to behave as primitive ids because the worlds of the head and heart do not meet. They do not communicate and enrich each other.  That's why we have all kinds of terrible policies from small private organizations up to large governments.  For example, we feel good when we have openness and transparency of intentions and actions, yet that's not how policy is made.  The reaction to WikiLeaks exemplifies this contradiction.  Companies almost never expose their true costs.  The writers of the US constitution had a feeling that all people should be treated equally, but their minds put non-whites into a category of property.  Surely some white slave owners felt the humanity of their slaves, but it was their opinions that held them back.  Today, it's immigrants.  Civil rights only belong to people born on one side of the line, the others can die and we don't care.  Bi-national couples are a prime example of the reality that people of different countries can love each other.  Oh, love, that's just a feeling!  Not to be heeded.

In realizing all of this, it becomes clear that work needs to be done.  Work to reconnect with our deeper feelings--and not just the deep ones--to find out what's behind the curtain of our thoughts.  It's not easy to do, but it must be done.  Feelings, again, are the substance of living.  To pretend otherwise not only makes for perverted outcomes, but makes for sorrow and conflict.  We all want joy, love, gratitude, and respect.  We can only allow those feelings to arise if we learn to understand them and their nature.

Ordinary Mysticism

We have a habit of thinking that the deepest insights, the most mystical, and spiritual insights, are somehow less ordinary than most things--that they are extraordinary.  This is the shallow refuge of the person who does not yet know what he is doing.  In fact, the opposite is true: the most mystical, most religious, most wonderful--these are not less ordinary than most things--they are more ordinary than most things.  It is because they are so ordinary, indeed, that they strike to the core...These deep things which really matter, they are not fragile--they are so solid that they can be talked about, expressed quite clearly.  What makes them hard to find is not that they are unusual, strange, hard to express--but on the contrary that they are so ordinary, so utterly basic in the ordinary bread and butter sense--that we never think of looking for them.  --C.A.


I really appreciated Christopher's insight on this matter, and indeed, it is so clearly expressed.  We tend to assume that deep thinking and mystical experience are so precious because they take so much effort to arrive at.  Only through years of practice and devotion--and the development of "expertise"--do we get the reward of that sought after experience.  Ordinary folk are somehow dependent upon the more erudite for the secret knowledge that they worked tirelessly to acquire.

It's true that those things which strike our cores are those things which seem so simple and so relevant to our lives.  The fanciful mental propositions of philosophers may be entertaining or intriguing, but it is those understandings that relate to our everyday experiencing of the world and our lives, which make the ground under our feet tremble.  They challenge our typical thinking and experiencing, and open new ways of apprehending the normal things that go on inside of us.  For example, in realizing that your hungry acquisition of knowledge is, deep down, a means for you to be liked or respected, just like those who pursue flashy cars and cosmetic surgery, you create a space in which you have the opportunity to be free from that impulse.  The insight comes quickly, like lightning, which illuminates the field around you and gives you a moment of clarity.

The secrets of life are all around us and inside of us, but we have to have the patience and openness to listen and observe.  It's the cornerstone of the scientific process, and look how many secrets of life have been discovered!  We are all scientists, in a fundamental sense, and we are all discovering.  We can share our secrets about the ordinary, and through that process, create the extraordinary.

Timeless Way of Living

There is a myth, sometimes widespread, that a person need only do inner work, in order to be alive like this; that a man is entirely responsible for his own problems; and that to cure himself, he need only change himself.  This teaching has some value, since it is so easy for a man to imagine that his problems are caused by "others." But it is a one-sided and mistaken view which also maintains the arrogance of the belief that the individual is self-sufficient, and not dependent in any essential way on his surroundings.  The fact is, a person is so far formed by his surroundings, that his state of harmony depends entirely on his harmony with his surroundings. Some kinds of physical and social circumstances help a person come to life.  Others make it very difficult.--CA


When I was sixteen I was introduced to the literary genre of inner work.  I took to it immediately, always feeling that I had a responsibility for my state of mind.  If I had an unhappy mood, thought, or circumstance, it was my own creation.  If I was maladjusted, I needed to recalibrate my mind so that I could be at ease with the environment.  If distress were still present, it meant I had more inner work to do.  This "arrogance" as Christopher Alexander calls it, stayed with me for many years.  It led me to psychology in college.  I had a passion to learn about the internal workings of people and myself to see how we and society at large are created from the inside out.  One class, though, put a chink in that assumption.  It was a class in sociology on deviance and conformity.  And the classic Zimbardo experiment.  Still, I was rather entrenched in my inner work orientation so I continued on mostly the same path, except for some seeds of doubt.

Circumstances in my life (throughout my twenties) became much more hostile, on many fronts (financial, academic, political), and my confidence in my ability to place myself in a state of perpetual contentment eroded.  I learned that I couldn't be the "master of my universe" no matter how diligent or honest I was.  Perhaps most people understand this instinctively, but I did not.  I thought that no matter how deplorable the conditions were around me, I could find a way (if I were wise enough) not to let those conditions affect me inside.  In other words, I could encase my inner being in a cocoon of peace.

Life loves to teach us many lessons, particularly those that show us how wrong we can be.  To adapt to my new understanding, I got more involved in "social activism."  I wanted to help change the circumstances that warp us and create so much conflict.  I saw the circumstances around me that are structural and that hurt me and wanted to begin the work to change them.  The most appealing organization with a comprehensive approach that I could find was The Zeitgeist Movement.

I see, though, some tendencies of people involved not to recognize the importance of inner work.  Since the ZM truly depends on a value shift in people, the "resource-based economy" cannot manifest as an imposition.  It must emerge through an understanding of the inner and outer.  A person must grow out of their need for domination and greed (insecurity) and understand that a social structure that promotes those qualities must be changed.  The problem isn't just "inside" or "outside."  It is in the relationship between the two.  In fact, the division itself is part of the problem.

Just as scientists (and the public) are now understanding epigenetics, we see that it is the relationship between the environment and genes that matters.  In the Timeless Way of Building, Christopher speaks about "patterns" as the fundamental building blocks of architecture, of society.  All doors are different, but there are relationship patterns common to all, which allow us to recognize and use them as doors.  We relate to each other, to objects, to nature.  It is in these relationship patterns that we either make ourselves dead or alive.   

Immunity to change insight

Though you are not aware of it, you have created a very effective anxiety-management system, and that system is what we call the immunity to change...This hidden dimension resides at the level of feelings rather than cognitive thought.  It is not anxious but is devoted to managing anxiety...But we run these systems--even highly successful anxiety-management systems--at a cost.  Inevitably, they create blind spots, prevent new learning, and constantly constrain action in some aspects of our living.  These costs show up when we are unable to deliver on some genuinely desired change, the realization of which would bring us to a new, higher level of functioning in ways we truly want to attain.  --RK & LLL


This book has truly been insightful and I'm just beginning.  It seems that we all have areas we want to improve in our lives, and in particular, our mental patterns.  However, we stubbornly resist change, or so we think.  The authors uncover why that change is so difficult to make.  They explain that people usually apply a "technical solution" as opposed to an "adaptive solution." The technical solution looks something like this: I'm  not easy-going enough and that's how I want to be.  So, I just need not to be so uptight; I need to let things go."

But, the uptight person doesn't get to the point where they can just let things go so they are stuck in the same pattern.  We all understand that the intellectual answer is easy, but the doing is difficult.  The authors explain that the reason it's so difficult to abandon the "problem behavior" is not just because it's ingrained in us (a typical explanation), but because it provides an important function.  It reduces anxiety.  That's why they call it an immunity to change, to put these behaviors in proper light.  See the good and the bad of that behavior.  Perhaps being uptight means you get a lot accomplished and after having accomplished so many things for so many years, it has been not just rewarded socially, but internally satisfying too.  The hidden fear might be something like this: "If I give up my uptight disposition, I will not get the tasks accomplished that I must take care of.  I will just become a lazy blob, completely unproductive and [gasp] worthless."  These are hidden assumptions that the anxiety-management system has been dealing with.  You don't feel anxious because this system has been operating to mitigate those dreaded outcomes.  In other words, you've avoided disaster because you've let your anxiety-management system run on autopilot.  It's served you and that's why it can't be so easily dismissed.  To simply let things go translates to (albeit a hidden feeling-assumption) leading your life into disaster.

But, as the authors mentioned, the cost is that we cannot realize those changes we truly and sincerely want to make.  When people fail to make the prescribed changes we blame a lack of willpower.  We blame all kinds of character defects.  We say they are actually insincere in their willingness to change.  And with that stroke of judgment, the discussion is over.  We now feel secure in our reasons of why that person doesn't want to change.  We generally have a little more sympathy for ourselves, but maybe just a little.

The authors encouraged the organizational leaders they worked with (for the past 25 years) to expose these underlying assumptions and benefits of their anxiety-management systems.  Only by exposing them and showing them as objective styles of behavior instead of unalterable character traits (the space between what I am and what I do) can we begin to make progress in creating the change we actually want.  My understanding is that this is a process.  Basically, you have to gently and kindly coax the anxiety-management system away from the cockpit.  You have to let it know, in a non-threatening way, that the plane won't crash if it leaves the cockpit.  Perhaps another can take over for awhile?  Then, you can begin the work of adapting your mindset.

Sometimes, it's so strange to me that we can be so blind to simple changes.  They feel revolutionary, and they are, but when explained, they feel so natural, so basic.  It's like no effort was really needed to understand and now you've come to this understanding, wholly and without conflict.  That's the revolution.  That's insight!

Two-thousand years of divided hearts

Through the years, we learned something of the history of the peninsula [in Thailand].  Just as Englishmen crossed the Atlantic a few hundred years ago to escape religious intolerance and found a new homeland in America, so the Hindu Dravidians of South India crossed the Bay of Bengal to this peninsula to escape the militant evangelism of the Buddhist King Asoka of North India, more than 2000 years ago.  They, like the English Pilgrims were colonizers bringing their traditions with them, and ensuing centuries brought both Hindus and Buddhists from north and south India, traders, and warriors and priests.  --M.B.S


In reading this narrative memoir of a missionary's life in the early 1900's in Siam/Thailand, I was intrigued by the parallel drawn between the exodus from India to the exodus from England.  While geographically distant, the condition of human consciousness was the same--even after two thousand years!!

It is my desire for a change in our current social consciousness that I winced when I read that.  Will it take us two thousand more years to understand our interdependence and benefits of cooperation?

Also, it was surprising to me to hear about the Buddhist king's ruthlessness, particularly in light of the philosophical orientation of non-violence and self-awareness found in Buddhism.  So many religious labels are applied to people and they really mean absolutely nothing.  In fact, they cause confusion.

A "bible-knocker" came to my door this morning and he seemed nice, but how would I really know?  Does he attempt to live with love and compassion, or instill dogmatism and fear?  It really depends on his intention.  Is a Christian someone to be cautious of or to welcome? I feel that anyone who wears a religious label proudly is someone who will create more conflict due to their lack of understanding of what identification with a concept means, however respected that notion may be in a particular society.  It is the beginning of division between people, and to divide is to lose the ability to connect.  The war begins there, in the heart.

The narrative that I'm reading now makes clear many circumstances and behaviors that are so different from today's world.  Technology seems to be the driving force behind these transformations in lifestyle, but it's also clear that today's market economy has transformed society significantly as well.  Edna, the character whose memoir the book is about, spends days doing tasks that are either no longer needed or easy to perform.  Transportation takes weeks, not hours.  People dying is a rather common occurrence, from (by today's standards) minor illnesses.  Those hardships we are glad to be rid of, but there are some things we miss out on today.  In the slow pace of life, there was much time for a poetic observation of life, of nature.  Edna speaks of the absorbing beauty in places she visited.  There is time to reflect and connect.  It's unfortunate that those aspects of life have diminished in contemporary times.