Searching space for humility?

It was Diwali last week...a festival for Jains, Sikhs, Hindus and many others who might care to use light as an aid to marking the sacred nature of existence.

Orion Nebula

Throughout the period I received text messages wishing me good fortune for Diwali and the new year. Amidst these was one verse that I found intriguing:

"Faith makes all things possible.

Hope makes all things work.

Love makes all things beautiful."

Sweet. Its a nice little reminder to be faithful, hopeful and loving, because if I do that then - the verse reassures me - all things will work out beautifully.

But what happens if we're feeling a bit low on faith, if we're not able to bring up all that hope or that loving feeling is gone? Does that mean that nothing is possible, that things won't work and that beauty disappears.

That seems a bit harsh really to me, if not even a bit of hubris.

 

The logic of the (uni)verse

This verse seems work with the premise that the human is the centre of knowing and being. It indicates that its up to us humans to have love, hope and faith and when we do, we almost produce beauty, possibility and working order (love makes all things beautiful, etc.).

I find it odd to think that beauty would disappear because of what we do. That the world would stop working if we lost hope. I can get the idea that if I hope, then things may work. And I know the idea that beauty is in how I look. But this way of looking seems to imply that there is a quite inert, blank world out there and that has no shape or direction of its own and that all that exists is the stuff inside our human head, hearts and bodies.

Are we really happy to say that without these human experiences and ways of being beauty, possibility and working order won't exist?

Fool Praying, Cecil Collins

Turn it up upside down

Of late I've been employing Carl Jung's practice of turning everyday, taken for granted notions on their head, of inverting the logic. I tried it with these three lines, and when I did so, something really interesting showed up:

"All things are possible and this makes faith.All things work and this make makes hope. All things are beautiful and this makes love."

And now, I can read it like this...

• that the universe is one in which all things are possible and this creates, produces or results in the thing you might call faith;
• that the universe is such that all things work and that stunning, elegant, ineffable working order creates the experience and the emotional sense of hope;
• that all things in the cosmos are beautiful and that reality of complete beauty creates the experience of love.

Suddenly, I find this way of looking at these experiences much more intriguing. Much more inviting in fact. I can see that this working, generative beauty is out there already. It exists in the cosmos. Everything (even things that can't manage faith and hope and love - like bad humans and non-humans) can participate in this universe fully because its there. And it doesn't require hope, faith and love in the human way.

A bit of humility?

And if we start with the notion that the reality of this universe is such that all things are possible already, that things work, that beauty just exists, then perhaps we can worry less about whether we are performing properly, whether we've got enough hope, and love and faith. I wonder whether we can then be invited into a humbling process of appreciating this working, beauty of possibility alongside (rather than separated from) the rest of the cosmos?

Tight Spot

Tight spot.

Tilting starboard.

Use head jam and lean to.

Sharp angle threatens golden spill.

Heads out.

Written Aboard Coral

August 2010

How to be Glum

We've all been there. You've been in the doldrums, been going through a series of misfortunes but the times are a changing and life seems to be looking up. Such positive developments can be worrying and its important to nip them in the bud. This is of course easier said than done and so in this article I present some tips on how to build and maintain an attitude of glumness when faced with potentially challenging positive circumstances.

My first tip is to cultivate a habit of saying no to people. Being a block on other people's energy by invariably saying no is quite tricky but will be worth the effort. Its important to make this a reflex and unchanging response, so that any offer that you are presented with is met with an instantaneous no. It won't do any good to think or show you're are thinking about the offer. If you manage this trick of being primed to say no, you'll soon find that offers and invitations from others will dry up. Once that happens you would be in a strong position to view your situation as one of 'me against the world'.

Its really quite important to maintain an aloof and distanced attitude towards your emotions if you wish to stay glum. For example, some people make a mistake of trying to make sense of their sadness, to try and find meaning in it. The problem with this strategy is that you're likely to come to some conclusions. The worst of which is the tragic idea that you are some how responsible for your own emotional experiences and that you could change your feeling at this immediate instance, without anyone's permission. Such an action-oriented attitude is anathema to those seeking deep glumness. So, my advice is to avoid any kind of process of productive reflection.

The challenge here is more complex than it first seems. This is because you want to use your brain to the fullest by replaying the difficulty of your situation over and over again in your mind. However, the untrained brain is notorious for suddenly making sensible and productive conclusions and wanting to move towards action. So watch out.

My next tip is much simpler. If you want to stay glum you should try to maintain a health attitude of scapegoating. Blaming other people for the situation that you are in is a critical tactic in ensuring you feel no gratitude nor grace in daily life. If you have a particular person to blame this can be quite helpful, though the cosmos in general is also quite adequate.

It is important not to get too carried away with the blame game though. If you allow blame against a particular individual or deity to develop too much, there is a danger that you could become angry. Anger is a difficult emotion as it sometimes can lead to sudden outbursts of invective. An underlying state of inaction and passivity is critical to the glum lifestyle and so getting angry at someone can seriously endanger the inactive bubble you're building for yourself.

My final tip is to avoid physical exercise. This may strike you as a little strange but its been shown to work time and again in the modern age. The pursuit of glumness is much, much simpler if you are able to deny the reality of everyday existence. To be glum you need to live in a perpetual state of low level anxiety about a past that no longer exists and a future that is yet to come. Exercise has been shown to foster a sense of grounding and connection with the physical reality of life, to put people in the present moment, and such an attitude is likely to distract us from the task of cultivating the internal damp misery of glum. So stay away from the treadmill.

Being glum is by no means easy and maintaining that attitude for any length of time can be really quite exhausting. In this article I hope I have inspired you to see that with some creativity and discipline there is quite a lot you can do to sustain your glum.

Is there space in loving relationships for conceptual thinking?

This is a question for someone out there.

To what extent is it appropriate to use conceptual thinking to help with relationships between people. Is that a bit freaky or is it a useful way to engage with the messiness of love, life and longing?

I ask because I have been thinking about both of these areas a lot recently and I am just a little tempted to apply some of my conceptual thinking to current affairs of the heart. I've not done so in earnest yet, because of a little nagging feeling that this is 'not on', that I'd be somehow denigrating the ineffable world of love by attempting to apply some structured way of thinking about it. Right now the particular field of ideas that's got me thinking is that of modelling and systems dynamics (systems dynamics is an approach to making sense of complex situations using the idea of dynamic feedback).

But before you think I'm completely fruity I think you should know that I'm not totally alone in looking to the world of ideas as an aide to the ephemeral beauties of life. Some of my favourite writers, researchers and thinkers have used the ideas from the sciences of systems thinking to explore the world of relationships. Bateson (both the father and daughter) and Paul Watzlawick have written about relationships using ideas from systems thinking - ideas to do with cybernitics, communication and control, feedback processes and so on. And I have found their insights fascinating and really helpful.

For example, Watzlawick has uses a wonderful example of a a boy and girl in relationship with each other to exemplify paradoxical communication and differences in logical types. He says that all communication has a content element and a relationship element; sometimes these two things get confused or mixed up leading to paradoxes that seemingly trap the people involved. Take for example, the suggestion by a lover to his partner to "be more spontaneous". Its a lovely thought...

"you know, I think its great that you like routines and I do love the fact that everyday for the past 14years we've had cornflakes/uttapam/gari/wheatgrass juice (delete as appropriate) for breakfast but could you try to something different. I mean just be a bit spontaneous."

Lovely stuff. But our cornflake eating friend is now faced with a bit of a dilemma. Maybe he likes cornflakes for breakfast everyday. And maybe spontenaity at that time in the morning is not all that fun. But maybe also somewhere deep down he hears his partner's request as not being about what's for breakfast. So, he waits until breakfast the next morning and then decides to swerve wildly off course and have a poached duck's egg with some dhal. There. I've done it; I've been spontaneous. Now he can't say I don't act spontaneously.

Meanwhile, our frankly surprised partner, is wondering how much of this spontaneous change of breakfast was down to a desire to show spontenaity and how much another (more depressing) reflection of his increasinly stagnated lover and relationship.

In describing the scenario, I think Watzlwick pointed out that one person's request of another to be spontaneous leaves the other in a bit of a trap. Anything that is done after that request can't be truly spontaneous since it can all be framed as part of a reaction to the original request; so not spontaneous at all. Unwittingly, he's left his lover with no choice but to fail.

-----
My point is that this whole case and analysis of an everyday relationship situation came from some quite deep engagement about a set of ideas to do with systems thinking. It wasn't simply a bit of advice over a pint of beer but was something worked out as a result of logical principles from a set of ideas (hypotehsis) about how the world might work.

And I think that lots of people use ideas and concepts to think about things in their lives such as friendships, lovers and family. The difference being that these acts of conceptual thinking are rarely seen let alone discussed. If they were made more visible, I think that they could help to make relationships better, warmer.

I'll write more on this soon, promise. But for now, a quick survey to the people out there ('What people?', I hear you say, 'there's no audience out here reading your blog'. Well, who said that then).

Is it appropriate for me to
a) use conceptual thinking to help me understand personal relationships?
b) share my use of conceptual thinking with those who I'm relating to?

yours conceptually in love
r

Climbing Trees with Guru-ji

A couple of months ago I was told by a wise woman that I ought to be weary of guru's and that I may find relationships with them difficult because of 'my nature'. I wasn't entirely sure what she meant by the delicate phrasing - 'my nature' - but when she offered me her words it certainly struck a chord....

I have tended to adopt a quite a sceptical attitude towards people who act and are treated as if they are gurus. I'm aware that gurus are jointly and dynamically 'created' through and in relationship (in the same way that someone or thing on taking a parent-type role in a relationship requires the other to be take on a child-type role). And yet, still I've found myself surprised, intrigued and sometimes even upset by the faith that some people seem to have for their guru. I've sometimes felt disturbed by the relative difficulty I have in associating with such figures compared with others; am I lacking in sufficient humility or respect? This tension has increased a little recently, as I've discovered that in some traditions, the role of the guru is regarded as quite important in the context of an individual's own spiritual or developmental journey.

The other day I had a image come to me that has helped me understand the tension I encounter a little bit better. I rolled the internal picture forward a few frames and here's the movie that played:

A man - thin, wiry, dark - is climbing a tree (its not a broad and sturdy English oak or a sparkling spruce; maybe its more like a coconut tree. Yes, that's it – a coconut or palm tree of some sort, swaying in a warm ocean breeze). The chap is climbing the tree, steadily and surely.

Now, the image splits into two separate films.

In one film, as our hero works his way up the tree and we see another fellow above him, climbing this same tree. As he clambers ever higher, debris falls down. Our wiry man barely notices the leaves and twigs falling down. But the leading climber eventually knocks a big fat, green coconut off. Down it tumbles. It hits a branch just above Wireman and whistles past his face. Huh. The grip is less certain now. It looks a long way down and it suddenly seems as if the momentum has changed direction – what goes up....

His guru calls down and Wireman dares to look up. Its easy, he calls. You just need to keep going. Motivational stuff from up there. Listen, bhaiya, positive mental attitude is needed to reach such altitude. Beneficient smile, sweetness and might. You can't be thinking negative thoughts now. Believe me, I did it. Come, yar. Come.

Wireman looks up and then pushes off with his right foot. He misses his footing and for a moment, he's a-gone-a....

Cut to...

Wireman 2.

Its not a sequel or prequel. More like a para-quel. Another story, another vision. Same lighting. Wireman is climbing the tree. Steadily and surely. And the guru is also climbing, sending down his debris. But what's this? The shot pans out....Its not the same tree at all. They're on different trees. And our wiry fellow is making his way up, without those kind gifts from guru-ji's showering down upon him. He looks over to his friend, who seems to be climbing high, and then looks up to the top of his tree. Oh, that's far. How on earth...He notices a sturdy looking branch, sticking out to the side and its within reach. Perhaps, I'll just aim for that one and then have a little rest.

As I said above, I have had a tense relationship with guru-type figures in the past. It not that I've had any conflicts with them; its all internal, as I struggle to know how to engage with their experience, intelligence, insights and so on.

I've wondered whether the source of the tension is my education. Damn, education. Somewhere along the line, I learnt something that is often known as 'critical thinking'. Doubt, doubt, question, doubt, doubt. Its lovely two-step dance. Try it some time. Doubt, doubt, question, doubt, doubt. I'm sure many of you already have. Doubt, doubt, question, doubt, doubt.

The screening of these two films in my head have given me a new angle on the difficulties I have relating to guru-type figures. I've realised that its not that I'm not willing to be inspired or that I lack humility. Its not that at all.

The second film works shows me a healthier way of relating to people who have worked hard and seem to have have gone further.

Its like this. Instead of following someone else up The Tree, its more helpful for me to see that we're each of us on different trees. We're both still connected, through the shared act of our climbing and there's a lot for me to learn from looking over. The challenges we encounter are somewhat similar but altogether different as well. Its my tree, adapted for (and, perhaps even, adapting to) me and my particular clumsiness.

And the guru, we'll he or she is a different kind of person altogether; she's no longer inadvertently sending down her own debris for me to deal with. In fact, she's mainly busy getting on with her own tree and debris.

Does this make sense or have I got the wrong end of the stick? Are there any wise women, sages or guru's out there who can let me know how wrong I've got this all?