Process

How is it even possible for me, to write something here which illustrates an understanding which itself is not captured by words? And then to instil within that writing the element of formulation within that understanding which is at odds with the very understanding? Zazen seems to express it but how could I really 'know'? And of course my own experience is only that- the experience which is expressed in the paradox of apparent separation. Without digressing into solipsism, and without dictating and imposing a formulation onto everything, where is the middle ground? The term 'heart-mind' is sometimes used in respect of all this and like all words is both useful and confusing. And so yesterday DC and I revisited in new clothes an old argument we have been having off and on now for almost as long as we have been together. He is an academic and in my fantasy (for all assessments are to a greater or lesser extent fantasy) totally fused in his occupation and identity. Further, the academic process is a web of knowledge ever refined, added to and rebuilt without end in pursuit of expansion of the mind's purview. And this is good, larger than any individual and meaningful. It is not however, reality. Reality is both larger and smaller than words. Our argument comes when for me the lens of this process is placed in front of every aspect of life and I feel squeezed by it. As I push back against it he feels rejected. As my life is informed by my own fusion of Zen, Taoism, western psychology, ecstatic movement practice, work in the construction industry, etc. etc... I write to craft a lens by which the small glimpses of that which defeats capture might be seen. Seen not in itself, for it has no self, but by what it reveals. And always with the knowledge that any realisation / appreciation / whatever word fits best, that may have passed through my being is very partial whilst neither partial or whole. And the thing is that not a word of this is any different to what DC wrestles with in his writing. Where that difference lies is possibly, in the validation of the academy. I do not wish to be dictated to by that which in my school years was as much a filter of ascribed worth as it was a vehicle for growth. Nor do I wish to have every creative floret of life assessed by it. However, I too am very given to intellectual rigor and greatly value this process. It is enough for me to play with words whilst wrapping them in their own limits, trying to avoid saying nothing of value or let them generate their own sophistry. In all respects there really is very little difference between DC and me.

I largely wrote the above before walking over to an EMDR session. What follows in this paragraph is post session, recalled as best I can remember. The focus of today's session was the period between about 16 and 24 years of age where it seems there is still unprocessed fear informing the emotional landscape of the present. Initially the images, memories and feelings are diffuse, vague and not readily available. There is probably a lot of numbing out in it. That after all is the function of compartmentalisation, set aside, don't fully go there, not feeling this, we have to keep this ship sailing. But sticking with the EMDR process images come, felt sense and meaning surface. I seem unable to meet the only available script, I'm not enough, small, isolated, rooms and others disappear to be replaced with black. My head brightly illuminated remains. The pen I'm following with my eyes stops, 'what do you notice?' I describe as above and the feelings of fear and of tiredness, about a 30/70 split. 'Stick with that.' The pen moves and I follow with my eyes. Images across this period of time come and go, a sense of younger to the left, older to the right, the black clears, left to right. The rooms return the people return but I've been erased. The pen I'm following with my eyes stops, 'what do you notice?' I describe as above. 'Stick with that.' The pen moves and I follow with my eyes. I reappear interacting with others, thin, sparse lines of connection form, there's a brittle feeling. The enormity of the task of surviving starts to penetrate, there is fear, tiredness, there's no option but to keep going. I do not know that it is ok not to be enough for the script, there's no other available. The pen I'm following with my eyes stops, 'what do you notice?' I describe the brittle connections, feeling not enough. I add '...and I wasn't enough, I couldn't inhabit the available script'. The sequence and timings written here may be slightly muddled, but the tone is close enough. Somewhere in the process the split of fear and tiredness shifted towards 50/50. The aloneness, heavy and dark shifts with lighter periods of connection and progress and threaded through all of it is determination. As the session draws to a close after similar cycles I'm aware that the erasure, from today's vantage point where so many other scripts are available including the transpersonal, resonates less with fear and more with liberation. But this vantage point was only reached after traveling in the boat of the erased. At the time it was out of range. I'm sure the coming weeks will see the process continue.

Saturday, DC and I visited the Bowes museum to see the Vivien Westwood and the Norman Cornish exhibitions. Both vibrant with the wider creative life force yet very different. The Westwood I notice is mainly of clothes for women and I note that there are more opportunities for women to dress up in more different ways. Dressing up hasn't really ever featured large in my style. The Cornish exhibition is virtually alive- the sketched figures seem almost in motion and totally at one with the culture and environs in which they resonate. I casually wandered past resident exhibitions wondering vaguely about aliveness, the wider erotic and sensuality just short of sexuality. Later I would play about with this territory in 'conversation' with an AI. Setting up the scene with it and feeding it previous posts it did generate some interesting depictions of what I was circling. I particularly liked this:

The beautiful is the appearance of harmonious vitality within a relational field. The erotic is that same harmonious vitality experienced as participatory and generative. Sexuality is one possible flowering of that participatory vitality.

I think it was probably my poem, 'Returning' from the 7th July that put it on the map! What I think is at the root of this is life's deepest desire to express. And how can we as human beings be the conduit for the richest expression? Illuminated and illuminating. What is it that remains after the erasure? What resolves in the synthesis of the diversity depicted in the above paragraphs? What remains to be resolved? What flowers in both the resolved and the unresolved?

Ecology

I experimented with asking various AI's to review some recent posts. Here is a distillation of some of the observations:

The ecology - there is a conviction—not so much argued as repeatedly discovered—that reality is relational rather than made of isolated things.

Time isn't linear.

The past is not "back there."

The self isn't an object. It's an ongoing process.

The body becomes a way of knowing.

Desire isn't simply wanting. It is life's movement towards expression.

Fear constricts.

Desire flowers.

Fear isn't the enemy, it is part of the unfolding. It has developmental roots but also existential ones.

Practice isn't eliminating fear. It's learning not to organise one's life around it.

Relationship is central. Nothing important happens alone. Even enlightenment is relational.

Mirrors appear constantly. Reflection appears constantly.

Holding appears constantly.

Beauty is evidence of alignment. Beauty is where form expresses life well.

Ethics are not rule-based. Nor are they simply consequentialist. They seem to ask:

"What allows life to flower?"

The criterion isn't abstract morality. It's aliveness.

The Red Thread. This may actually be the organising principle.

Because it asks:

What keeps appearing?

The writing doesn't seem to be asking "What is enlightenment?"

Nor even "Who am I?"

The question that keeps reappearing underneath almost everything is:

How does life become more fully alive through this particular human being, in this particular moment?

I find this quite a lovely list. The interplay of 'what keeps appearing' and 'how does life become more fully alive through this particular human being, in this particular moment?' is intriguing. Patterns do repeat and this human being is sustaining. There is an intention towards what might be called expansion or at least not getting in the way. Broadly, the epistemology is Zen Buddhist of course, the blog takes its title from Case 5 Mumonkan, but it's equally important to include western psychology. Whilst each post is a function of the muse in the moment, the overarching inspiration is illustration of some of a response to the koan. This interplay is both the arising of and response to the koan. I'd not say the Red Thread koan was the organising principle although it's plain that there is no koan or anything outside of our embodied lives beyond speculation. And speculation is within our lives. Whichever way you cut it the cat is always One. But can we get out of our way and see a picture large enough to hold it? That is an ecological process.

 

Returning

Seen by the eye and felt by the root

Each line and curving plane, enlivened by animation

Eye to eye, eye to root, eye to eye

Mirrored the fire rises

The mind supplies fuel, the fire rises

Fast is the mind's desire, slow is the heart's

Quick now, first contact

The hands reach out to read the enlivened curving planes

Eye to eye, mouth to mouth, say not a word.

Root's firm stalk taken in hand winks

Slide the reading pressing hand round nape to draw the head closer

Then curved planes to each other full length and wrapped around

Fast heartbeat feeds the glowing shifting tangents

Pressed they shift to expand outwards and inwards

Smell and taste fuse the warm and shifting landscape

Each root pressed against the other, winks

The end beckons the journey be fast but breath fuels it

The wave passes, the mind's fuel dwindles

Motion signals, weight signals, the dance picks up pace

Fast they melt, slow they melt, rhythmic

The space between each body is electric

Cleaved open to and by this field they close

Close unto one shimmering field, then open

The shifting heat illuminates the liminal

Each pulse drives deeper the fluid planes

Mind's work done it rests

Each pulse melts the fluid planes

Liquid they drip into each other

Heat bathes the electric field and soothes the tension

Being savours the woven silken field

Then waves of their own depth surface

Rising and falling, rising and falling

Contract, open, contract open

Deeper the liquid liminal falling

Falling, falling, rising ever higher

The field's ear hears the small call of death

And answers, liquid

Pulses, liquid

Shimmering liquid light on the ocean, liquid

Liquid, slowly fades...

And the room returns, to hold the spent 

 

  

Flash!

In each spark the lark ascending

Flesh of stardust betwixt heaven and earth

Separation and Oneness pretend to be opposites

Child of the Tao and father of the mind yet seen only in its eye

Circle of becoming and maker of time

Expelled from the womb, briefest flash

Who is the dweller and who is the home?

Mind in body or body in mind?

Fed by the earth and the mind's penetration

With each thing this body-mind mingles, to reach for tomorrow, tomorrow, today

Desire's kaleidoscope throws out its colours: come, expand

Eros in his manifold ways mingles in our mind, mingles in our body

Come tomorrow be with me today

The path shapes the foot and the foot shapes the path

Come tomorrow be with me today

Flesh grants love's majesty through all its forms

Come, come be with me in so many ways

Spark! I hear thee calling, who is the dweller who is the home?

Spark, you are the dweller you are the home

The wave in the water the light in the moon

Yet we are suspended, oh majesty in our firmament

Suspended yet rolling: each turn of the wheel

Sing lark, sing! Each turn of the wheel

Circle of becoming and maker of time

In each heart-mind bright moonlight dances on the ocean

Love

If Whitman sings the body electric

I might say smooth creamy vibrant

Grounded and flying, still and whiplash fast

Sharp and flowing gentle as good night or morning

And a day full, all liminal in fullness

Then fear is tight, constricted, like fragile glass

The very breath feels heavy

As if to weigh down the too light body

Where it should float the vibrant smoothness

And breathe... Tight, foothills of panic, tension

Cheeks blow

Mind notes parasympathetic

Bright mind where aligned is flowing

Like Whitman's choir singing

But here stalled and waiting

Fear drives each slow step, twilight

Cheeks blow

Mind notes parasympathetic

Breathe

The smoke of his once-ness, in the beginningless now

This is not the liminal of fullness

Past comes into present

Present orchestral in hues of vibrant smoothness

Though yes, still shot with fear of broken glass

And so another turn around the spiral

Yet tomorrow

The very air sings the body electric

Liminal in fullness, bright mind dances

Joy as it turns the diamond, in Indra's net it sparkles

Sharpest thoughts, the fastest flowing

Liminal in fullness, body whiplash fast

Then earth and sea too sparkle

Gentle flowing as fire rises

The body breathes

The smoke of his once-ness lost in its embers

In each body our embers sparkle

Glow in each other's light and turn the diamond

And so another turn around the spiral

Incongruence

I have found myself considering those developmental years of late adolescence and early adulthood when it was far from obvious that the world had a place for the kind of man I seemed to be. There's definitely still a charge around those memories. Unpacking the charge into the beliefs, ascribed meanings and fears generating emotional charges at the time and understanding the emotional residue in the present and the unresolved trauma which can be triggered is quite a complex business. Most gay men of my generation will say something along the lines of '...it was like trying to put together a jigsaw without the picture on the box lid'. And of course that's true to a greater or lesser extent for all young people. But there's a key difference for gay men of my generation, we had no public script. In my own case although I had arrived (as a result of an early normal fast tempo puberty) at my final height of 5'6" by 16, I remained slight and young looking right through my twenties. Throw in a non-sporty observant temperament, and (initially repressed) homosexuality and it seemed like I wasn't going to be able to fit the culturally limited image of manhood. Early responsibilities as a care giver had added to this and the result was a lack of social embeddedness. Nothing especially new here then, territory I explored back in the coming out days one way or another. But I came a cross what I find to be a useful term- incongruent masculinity. And in the days when one doesn't see a viable script, is not mirrored and has limited emotional support or buffering it is all too easy to add meaning to what might otherwise be neutral facts and misinterpret incongruence as insufficiency. And so incongruence, compartmentalisation, lack of social embeddedness and early responsibilities resulted in what psychologists call asynchronous development. Such development has its costs - mainly grief for the unlived life but also its benefits, awareness being one, or to put it figuratively - straight men (ie congruent men) they're like fish in the sea, they don't see the water. And another element in this is that for men of my generation part of the limited script which was available was a perverse denial that the script existed. So for example it was very clear that small youthful looking men were regarded as insufficient yet at the same time there was denial that this was being policed and an expectation that such a man should 'man up' about his insufficiency and bear the 'shame' in silence. And so this too was to be put in a compartment. Masculinity was tightly policed. Whilst homosexuality had, in the year of my birth been partly decriminalised it remained socially taboo and for most gay men required a tight compartment to ensure safety. In this regard coming out was a process as much about generating safety as it was about internal acceptance. Finding a script wasn't easy. The dominant scripts and hierarchies of hegemonic masculinity affect everyone and whilst the toxicity of this is now much better understood it still remains muddy water for many. Incongruence seems to me to be a useful way to see any deviation from the hegemonic norm, and it becomes clear that this extends beyond physicality, gender and sexuality. In the workplace it's observable in what DC and I have previously termed 'The family guy thing'. Basically overt and covert power systems operate to ostensibly (the overt power system) provide fairness and psychological safety whilst in practice real power is covert and restricted to the congruent, all too often this group aligns heavily with congruent masculinity. But it's important here to recognise that congruence is multi-dimensional (culture, gender, race, sexuality, disability, neurodivergence, etc.) and there are intersections. The ways in which the (ostensibly) incongruent adapt to this and and become congruent, depend I suppose, much on the extent and the nature of the mismatch between forms of congruence. Authenticity and the limits of one's ability to enact or modify those forms of congruence place one inside or outside the boundary of covert power.

I can expand this to consider the modern conflict averse workplace. Again overt and covert power systems and decision making play out both internally within the employer's business and in the external relationships with clients and subcontractors in my experience. The overt systems claim to aim for openness, collaboration, group and individual safety and seek to deescalate conflict. In practice this often delays decision making, 'takes things off-line' and feeds difficult problems and processes to a covert system. In this covert system power is held by the congruent and exercised over the incongruent who as a result have their safety reduced. In this way hegemonic power systems operate through covert systems.

Incongruency can generate better leadership and safety because it often creates conditions where awareness becomes essential, but the obstacles to manifesting such leadership are the added burden of managing the congruent and the displaced work in the covert system which should be handled in the overt system. Eventually in my experience as stated above, authenticity and the limits of one's ability to enact or modify forms of congruence place one inside or outside the boundary of covert power. Whilst the covet is still operational there is a limit on the leadership the incongruent can deliver. For me this becomes an inflection point for authenticity and ultimately defines how much I'm able to operate in any system. Competency in the field of required delivery is one of the the main antidotes to covert systems because they often form a hiding place for the incompetent, but to challenge the hegemony is not without risk and a constant balancing act is usually required. Competence is often a threat to those who benefit from the covert even if they try to deny it by withholding legitimacy, whilst still utilising it by appropriating the output of the incongruent. Further, because congruence generates ease, awareness can often be lacking (as the congruent seldom see the water). And so the congruent may not be fully aware of their subjugation of the incongruent, whereas, the incongruent often lack ease and have their awareness surreptitiously purloined.  

Returning to the costs of (social) incongruency, often, hypervigilance, asynchronous development and associated non-normative experience (these two form an ongoing loop for some time), lack of social embeddedness, etc., it should be clear that the model is relevant not just to psychological development but career development too because what is at stake is access to power systems and psychological safety. Or put another way - in the presence of covert systems, legitimacy is granted by the congruent and usually to the congruent. This stifles cultural responsiveness and is why it can take so long for the incongruent to gain legitimacy.

At a personal level I would say that authenticity remains an ongoing work to integrate identity as an unfolding process within the constraints of available safety and awareness not just of (in)congruence but any frame of reference.

Desire in the beginning

A couple of evenings ago DC read out a description of 'the beginning' from one of the Vedas which noted that desire was present at the One becoming many. I've mused in past posts that the universe seems to have both the desire to make (and reabsorb) forms and through forms to know itself. And in humans through enquiry and knowledge systems, is gained understanding of the origin of the universe and in 'spiritual' practice to 'know' the unknowable. It is then, easy to associate 'the beginning' in different discourses with an historical event such as the 'big bang'. But this isn't my sense of what is being said in eastern spiritual texts. The beginning is each moment and each moment is both form and emptiness for all forms are interdependently arising and there is nothing behind them existing in time other than their is-ness in each moment. Blaha, blaha...

But another word has come to my attention recently- liminal. As part of my EMDR therapy taking a turn around the spiral of integration I came back to the liminal version of my body. Liminal in that whilst medically unremarkable it was in teens and early twenties socially salient for slightness. This generated an internal sense that I was neither medically suffering from 'something' nor socially what was expected. The degree of this salience is lost in mists of time and the psychological effect of it was doubtless amplified by both my compartmentalised sexuality and perception lag as I gradually gained mass. The liminality being a space of loose anchoring in perceived masculinity. All the while fighting an education system made to sort sheep! Blimey! And all the while each moment is the beginning, pregnant with desire to be. To be in my case, both liminal and wanting not to be so. What the moment / universe 'desires' and what each of us as selves desire don't always line up. Everything of course is liminal- being is a movement- an equipoise of change- perceived, perceiving and perceiver are One.  Blaha, blaha... And what of the felt sense of this desire and fear? If Whitman sings the body electric, I might say smooth creamy vibrant, grounded and flying, still and whiplash fast sharp and flowing gentle as good night or morning and a day full, all liminal in fullness, then fear is tight, constricted, like fragile glass, the very breath feels heavy as if to weight down the too light body where it should float the vibrant smoothness. And breathe... Tight, foothills of panic, tension, cheeks blowing, mind notes parasympathetic response... Bright mind not aligned with education system filled with I'm behind... peers moved on to university and... like Whitman's choir singing... but here stalled and waiting fear drives each slow step in twilight... cheeks blowing, mind notes parasympathetic response... Breathe... The smoke of his once-ness, in the beginningless now... this is not the liminal of fulness. And this is just the past coming into the present. The present is actually orchestral in hues of vibrant smoothness though yes, still shot with fear of broken glass. And so another turn around the spiral.

And today, a fit and healthy body of good proportions supports a mind still sharp and asking- desire...?