It's the Format, Stupid?

Hotei, a laughing monkWhy add that cruel address? stupid? I'm talking to myself like that because this is maybe the hundredth time I've realized that format steers human interaction. When I told friends about my big Aha, they were, like: oh yeah, look at the signature on your email. 

PsychoZen.Org, Method Meets Life

But, no, I'm not stupid, just making the same old error. What prompted the too familiar revelation this time was that I found myself comparing my Zen friends with other important people in my life who seemed to misunderstand my nature. And then I remembered The Cloakroom, a tiny area at the Zendo where people doff and don their shoes and jackets. In this bitsy space people overflow with the kind of small talk that has always made me freeze with fear and then burn with irritation.

How are you? [do I tell about my disease or just kvell about the weather?]
I'm excited about my new show. [did I know this? should I ask, but do I have to go?]
Got any exciting plans for the summer? [no, I'm hopelessly behind as usual and now I have to ask about yours and feel even worse]

But then the format changes and everything changes. We sit quietly together as our minds entrain to the lower frequencies that can hold and modulate the usual cacophony. The people don't change, except they do.

My patients rarely saw me as judgmental, but plenty of friends and family think I'm pretty opinionated. Who is mistaken? Neither, of course. I didn't judge during sessions because that isn't the format. It would mess up my listening mind. It wouldn't transform anything. It would make people feel worse. While all that is possibly still true outside the therapeutic environment, it's damn fun to have a good argument. Maybe not in the cloakroom, but...

Similarly, tweet all day and your mind will be shallow and fragmented, unless you vigilantly curate your feed. Go to a traditional school and you will produce traditional ideas, unless you make a point of rebelling. Hang around with woke people and you will probably become facile with the splendid spectrum of pronouns. 

Format. Context. Method.

So, I've designed improvisations that elevate the sound of language over the meaning. I've created groups that bend toward truth instead of social requirements. And I've tried to avoid formats that make my brain explode. 

That doesn't make me right and you wrong, just because you like cloakrooms and cocktail parties. And it doesn't make me dislike you. In fact, I might admire you a little. Just don't invite me to your opening. 

Hah, no, that's too harsh a conclusion, though I can't go to your opening now, and you probably aren't having one. But if I could and you were, I might spit and stammer before I finally gush appropriately. I might need an hour or a day to recover. It's ok. I'll survive.

oops, or maybe not. ;-)

February 9, 2022

Even the Good Stuff

Sit with it, psychology supervisors would say in grad school.  She needs to sit with her sadness, guilt, dilemma, etc.  In practice, I learned that most clients interpret this as submitting to their inner attacker until it hurts a lot, really really enough, and then, having done their duty, getting back to what’s actually fun and lively.  Fortunately, as I sat in my own meditation, I was able to clarify the process and then guide clients through it.  Sitting with it means that we allow the connection between thoughts and feelings to dissolve.  When they stop reinforcing each other,  we are freed from repetitive loops and we can actually move on, not just push through.  

But here’s the thing:  When stuff feels awful, we work pretty hard at this.  We get good at identifying our inner critical introjects and naming them as thoughts and not obeying them and returning to our sensation and All That.  Because we want to feel better, right?  But then we do.  We feel better.  And then we’re done, we think.  No more pain.  I graduated.  But…  then… alas.   It slips away.   What happened to that good feeling?  

That’s the question in the air, along with

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Feeling Thought Loops

It  goes like this:  You have a feeling, say anxiety, and a thought comes with it, say: I gotta get outa here!  It's more like a command, isn't it?  So you obey, right?  You try to get out.  But maybe you can't, so you get more anxious; as you get more anxious, your mind develops the thought, embellishing the fantasy of disaster if you fail to escape.  More anxiety.  Shall I go on?  Have you been there?

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Get your feelings out!

Not so fast!   If you feel like murdering someone, kicking your dog, running from challenge, eating til you can't breathe....do you do it?

No.  right?  you don't, right?  

Feelings are not facts, but they make our beliefs seem like facts.

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Take Anger, for example

The problem with anger is that not only are we really not allowed to murder people, but we've been told since day 1 (ok, maybe 121, but still, pretty early) that if we are angry, we are bad and wrong and...crazy...also ugly....and...well, maybe it's just me but it's a rare duck that really surfs with anger.   With all those nasty descriptions, it would certainly seem like a better idea to not get angry.  But we do anyway, right?  So we try to hold it in.

So, then when we were 20something maybe we got the idea that we should let it all out.  We went around telling people the truth about the way I feel.

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Happiness is Attention

We may not want to believe it but happiness is entirely available, no matter what.  Attention itself makes us happy, not its object.   Says Spinoza, "When the mind regards itself and its own power of activity, it feels pleasure."   Allow me to emphasize: Pleasure!  Not just boring old serenity.   And it's not just regarding the mind that is so much fun.  Attending even to something awful is surprisingly interesting.

Ogre is paying attentionAgain and again, my clients describe the agony of anticipating and imagining a disastrous event.  A huge amount of preparation and tension goes into preventing the dreaded thing, and yet the ACTUAL event is, without fail, a better experience than its imagining. 

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Yes, it IS about Time

It's never really about time or money,  said a wise but mistaken psychotherapist.  

Yes, it IS about time, really.  Time is change, for one thing, and change is our only true master.  Now I write, but in 25 minutes it will be time to go to the podiatrist.  Later it will be time to go home, time to go to sleep, time to wake up, time to work, time to cook, time to do the dishes.  Time seems to move too fast, meaning that I am too slow to change.  I wish I could be time, as Zen Master Dogen teaches; I would be the clock, the moving part, the changing thing.  The problem is that I need time to truly absorb this lesson and I'm in too much of a rush to stop and…. 

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How to Meditate

First off, what is it?   I can't tell you how many times I've heard: I can't meditate.  Right away that tells me that there's some ideal people think they are not reaching.  But reaching is exactly what we don't do when we meditate. So, how do you not reach?  How do you not do?  Start with the certainty that you absolutely cannot do it wrong.   

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The Change Steps

For real and lasting change, you'll need DIPS: Determination, Intention, Practice, and Support.um..change steps?

D for Determination: When we've banged our heads against the wall enough, frustration points us to a new direction.  Yes, this really is a step.  Banging our heads is quite productive.   It produces pain that leads us to an alternative (unless we have learned helpnessness, which is another conundrum addressed elsewhere.)   We are determined to quit smoking, for example.

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Bridges

Updated on Tuesday, June 12, 2012 at 10:16AM by Elena Taurke

Let go…..Cleopatra.. said my dance teacher in response to my failure to connect a phrase.   Say what?!  said I, stalling for time. It's a Donkey Bridge, he clarified, let go of the arms, then Cleopatra to make a shape.   A memory device, a connector, so called because donkeys are supposedly too stupid to make it across the river any other way.   In Zen it is said: Every Ass can Pass.   Every one of us can get to the other side but we need the right bridge.  

Words can be a bridge to dance.  Dance can be a bridge to freedom.   Yoga to meditation or meditation to yoga.   The specter of death is a nifty bridge to a satisfying life.  

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